Objectives:

1. to show the level of information and information technology

2. to call for support of the participants

Agenda:

1. Talk by Ms Gerda de Bruiyn, co-ordinator of the Women's Commission in the Netherlands (Kalinya from Surinam)

2. Introduction by Ms Yvonne Belen, member of the Women's Commission in the Netherlands (Bontoc from Philippines)

3. Presentations:

a) Ms Tarcila Rivera-Zea, CHIRAPAC (Centre of Indigenous Cultures) and president of the Permanent Workshop of Indigenous Women of Peru (Quechua from Peru)

b) Ms Bernice See, president of INNABUYOG (Federation of Indigenous Cordillera Women's Organisations) (Kankanaey, Bontoc, Northern Phillipines)

c) Svetlana Sokolova, Russian Federation Republic of Skha, Yakutia

4. Open forum

Minutes:

ad 1. Ms Gerda de Bruiyn
Word of welcome to all participants.
The Indigenous Council in the Netherlands has been founded in 1995 in the context of the international decade of the UN on indigenous people. Its objective is to create room for the problems of the indigenous people. The Indigenous Council is an umbrella organisation in which there are several commissions. One of them is the Indigenous Women's Commission. The objectives of the Indigenous Women's Commission are to defend the interests of indigenous women and to make them visible. The process of emancipation of indigenous women is threefold. It concerns their emancipation as indigenous people, as women and as indigenous women. Traditionally, indigenous women play an important role in communication; they are considered the treasurers of the indigenous culture. Last year the Women's Commission has been approached by the IIAV to organise this workshop. However, their experience is that it is very difficult to get the right information to the people who need it. This resulted in the idea to organise the pre-conference of indigenous women. The result of this pre-conference is the manifest that is available both in English and Spanish at the Women's Commission.

 

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ad 2. Ms Yvonne Belen
Word of welcome and gratitude to all participants.
There is information on indigenous people but most of this information are anthropological studies. These are carried out by researchers that describe culture for posterity. This information is written from the perspective of colonisers, anthropologists, academics, international corporations or from the perspective of those in the government. These people use this information either for developing tourism or to assimilate the indigenous people. Much of the information gathered this way is derogatory or insulting, and if there is something good which is said about indigenous people it is often patronising. Much of the information on indigenous people was stoles or bought from us and consequently has been taken away from us. The information was brought to the western countries and their museums. However, we want to build our own collection of information. Information to us is not just data, but carries with it our world view. It does not only refer to written documents, but also involves oral accounts that are sustained through time. We want to have a living library. It should preserve our cultural values that we consider necessary for our life as indigenous people and its information should be collectively determined by the indigenous people themselves.

 

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ad 3a Ms Tarcila Riviera
We, indigenous women, are much more than only the costumes we are wearing in which people want to photograph us. We think about our future and our position as indigenous women. The process of the organisation of indigenous women in the Americas has reached a continental level in which the South, the Central and the North are involved. Non-indigenous women mistakenly have the opinion that we do not work from a gender perspective as we are talking about the indigenous people. However, we think holistic, first as indigenous people, then as women. We have to defend our territory. Inside our territory we fight our own gender struggles. International conferences like the ones in Cairo and Beijing are important for indigenous women to create room to present our ideas and this (the above mentioned) issue. Therefore we held meetings prior to Beijing, at national, regional and international (the Americas) level.
The international meeting was held in 1995 in Quito. There we prepared documents that explained our perspective and point of view for the Beijing conference. At the Beijing conference there were very few indigenous women. In spite of this we had our tents and we made our issues known. Vicky Tauli was a great help in this. After Beijing the organising process continued in our continent. After 2 years we managed to link with organisations of the South, the Centre and the North. Together we set priorities in order to progress.
Our first priority is capacity building of indigenous women, as there is an enormous need for training in order to be able to participate in events at different levels (national and international). With regard to the subject of communication we are dealing with today, there is a major limitation due to the lack of access to communication technology, resources and information. This limits both the communication between ourselves and our communication with other movements. Of course we do have our own methods of communication, but those are mainly suitable at local and community level. Modernity demands us to adopt new methods of communication, but this has to be done in a very selective manner. Globalisation does not necessarily imply the development of a uniform ideology only, but may also refer to the exchange of ideas, values and information.

What we learned about documentation centres here is very important, for several reasons:
Firstly, to reinforce our organisations by getting in touch with organisations that fight similar struggles. Secondly to be able to immediately denounce and call to a halt the violation of human rights by our governments through e-mail or internet. Thirdly, new means of communication can be used for education. For example audio-visual means may be a tool in informing illiterate people about human rights and thus help to defend themselves better.
Finally, we could use these means for our cultural expression over generations. Currently new means of communication are penetrating our lives and inhibit the transmission of our culture to new generations. Therefore we should change this development to our goals and use these means for the transmission of our culture. In the latter line of thought, documentation centres should perhaps store more information in audio-visually. (Of course we should remain critical about the new communication technology.)
We want to encounter in those information centres studies done by our own women, from our own perspective and vision. We want to do these studies together with anthropologists.
We do not want them to come, gather the information, without the results ever being devolved to us. How many publications have been made about us, that we do not even know about. Often there is a lack of respect. They even write down how we sleep.
There is a problem for indigenous women to obtain funds.
There is an imbalance between the funds directed to non-indigenous women and those directed to indigenous women, to the benefit of the first. This should be corrected.
Our organisation in Peru contacted the Canadian organisation of Alberta, who is training librarians. We would like indigenous women from her organisation to come to work with us. This will enhance solidarity, not only in terms of money, but also in terms of understanding and the exchange of experiences.
Many documentation centres do not have information specifically about indigenous women, but only about rural women. They gather us under the heading "rural", because most of us happen to live in rural areas, but this is not our identity. Indigenous women should be a category of its own. We want to know who we are, where we come from, where we are and where we are going to, as people and as women.

 

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ad 3b Ms Benice See
I would like to share with you a specific issue we have in terms of information services, networking and information technology in order to capacitate, organise and mobilise people and to influence policy. Our region is rich in copper and gold, therefore the state and multinational corporations are interested in it. It poses a number of problems to the region for which the main cause lies in the state-ownership of land. This implies that the state can issue concessions to mining companies. Though, we live on that land, the state does not acknowledge our ancestral ownership of the land. Traditionally, our communities engage in gold mining at a small scale. In the beginning of this century the colonial government issued a number of concessions to companies that the community did not know about. Until 1990 there was a sort of peaceful co-existence between the community and the company. However, in the late eighties, the companies started shifting from underground mining to open pit mining and for this they needed more land. They also needed less labour for that. As a result people were dismissed and communities were displaced. The indigenous community had nowhere to go.
Since 1970 the people's movement in the region organised the indigenous people, the labourers, the students, the professionals, the women, the church and so on. This is where we see how the exchange of information between the different sectors became important for actions against the mining companies. The shift of the mining companies to open pit mining created the need for people to organise themselves. Organisers were helping the people in our community. The women in particular were very strong, they went out at night to tear down the fences of the companies. Others went to look for information from outside sources (U.S., U.K., Australia) about what exactly is open pit mining and what is its impact on people and the environment. They could provide scientific information to our people about the subject. Since late eighties we also disseminate information to organisations in other provinces where we know mining is going on and we disseminate information at national level. We also try to get information about the lobbying activities of mining companies with our government and inform the community about it. In 1993 we organised the First Asian Indigenous Women's Conference, which resulted in a network. Another activity is to learn the children of the community to articulate their interests. The struggle we are fighting, made elder people much more conscious about the transmission of our cultural values. How we used to connect to the land, for example expressed in songs. As we gained strength, we convened the First Women's Mining Conference in 1995. Now we are ready to convene an international conference on mining, in which indigenous women form an important focus group. I showed how an indigenous people tackled a problem and selectively obtained and shared information with the outside world. The collection of information is done on our own terms and by this we want to transfer to the future generations that this information is alive, that the struggle with the mining companies has a history, that it is a continuous struggle. For this purpose we made documents, which are mainly intended for educators that can use this to inform the community. There are also some documents in English to inform other regions in the Philippines, in particular for the education of children, or even to inform the international community. An important aim would be to link up with other indigenous people, especially women, that are affected by mining. Often one company operates in several areas and this makes it useful to exchange information.

 

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ad 3c Ms Svetlana Sokolova
I use to take films about my region, Yakutia, to show about the ecological, health and general issues in the region. I believe this is the most clear and conveys most emotional information. Unfortunately there is no video player available at the moment. With regard to the subject of this conference, communication, I will only talk about the situation in Yakutia. Its territory is 3 million km2 big and there live 1 million people. There are no means of transport, only an aeroplane. The radio is not available everywhere and the television only for about 40% of the population. Due to the hard socio-economic situation the country is passing at the moment, many people do not receive their wages. They do not read, nor buy news papers. For women especially there is only 1 magazine that comes out once in 3 months. For the Arctic women there has come out only 1 sheet of text thrice. Of a lot of information exists about the indigenous women in Yakutia. They live in an area rich of natural resources, like gold, diamonds and gas. The technology is very outdated, therefore it is polluting nature and this affects the health of women and children. There is a certain area where uranium is mined. In that area only 10 out of 223 are healthy. People suffer from stomach problems, problems with other organs, the immunity system, tuberculosis. In addition to this, women face problems giving birth. Half of the deliveries has to be done by caesarean section and many deformed children are born. Infant mortality is high, 2-4 children out of 1000 die. (?) Thus a lot of information is needed, it would be important to know which illnesses occur, how they can be cured, why they occur and so on. I have a lot of questions to about how to use the internet, because it is available in Yakutia. I want help to be able to disseminate the information that I gather here at home.

 

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ad 4 Open forum
How can we be sure that the secret information we provide will not be abused by the people, colonisers, governments, we are fighting? After all the internet is accessible to all. Internet has been created in cultures that are spiritually not well developed. How do we overcome this inadequacy of the internet in order to express our spiritual needs? Internet is mainly the same thing as expressing oneself on paper, only faster. We should make this medium our own and arrange the space as we want it. Develop our own way of communicating on internet. You shouldn't just put any information on internet. For example our knowledge about medicinal plants will be stolen by companies if we would write it on internet. I believe that everybody here agrees that spirituality is not something you can write on a piece of paper. It is in a communitarian way of living, a relationship with land and the collective knowledge about life. This can only be communicated orally. It is a style of life, a cosmo-vision. This means a philosophical principle of life, looking at the world and relating one-self to her. We should be very selective in what we share and what we use at the internet. We are not going to bear our soul at the internet. We are not going to put names and statements of this meeting at the internet. We are going to put forward the issues we discussed as a statement supported by the group. Most women that belong to indigenous women and other feel as if they are sisters. Internet can reinforce this. The free space to present ourselves, our community, our women, our problems should be organised as we want it. We respect and trust each other in such places. Internet is a tool for sisterhood. It is a strategy to make a network. We cannot go to visit every community and it wouldn't make sense. It is a high potential network, with an emergent property (plus-value) for all participants. There should be no distinction between indigenous and non-indigenous. We sign up to strengthen the struggles our sisters in other places are fighting. In the pre-conference there was a large list of proposals. One of the important proposals I want to mention is that all women that are in organisations should have the equipment and access to internet. "Internet for all!" could be the name of the campaign. Therefore all participants should try to identify resources for indigenous women to get access to internet. Moreover, we still could find the funds for the third conference of indigenous women in the Americas that will be organised next year. If there is sisterhood solidarity, knowledge about such things should be passed on to each other.

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This page last updated on september 4, 1998. Copyright © 1998 IIAV.

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