7 Positive Representations of Indigenous Communities We’re Proud of

  The indigenous community has historically been overlooked and dehumanized but now more than ever they are getting the attention and respect they deserve

Photo: Unsplash/@larahaenny

Photo: Unsplash/@larahaenny

Avatar de Virginia Isaad

By  Virginia Isaad

The indigenous community has historically been overlooked and dehumanized but now more than ever they are getting the attention and respect they deserve. With icons like Yalitza Aparicio and activists like Amazonian female Chief Nazaré bringing the indigenous community front and center, their work is getting international attention. But these women are just two examples of a community that includes a total population of 45 million in Latin America, with more than 800 different indigenous communities. Despite the sheer size of the indigenous community, they have not been able to receive fair representation. In Brazil, Chile and Uruguay, there is a 100 percent representation gap in politics and the country with the lowest gap – Ecuador- is still abysmal with 27 percent. Furthermore, 43 percent of the indigenous communities live in poverty. But these barriers are not keeping indigenous women from advocating for their community and raising awareness about important causes. From 19-year-old Artemisa Xakriabá to elderly chiefs like sixty-eight-year-old Tsiweyenki of Paraguay, the seven representations of indigenous power in this list prove nothing can hold them back.

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Yalitza Aparicio is the First Indigenous Woman on a Vogue Cover

https://twitter.com/stefansanc/status/1174161011818909697?s=20

Roma actress Yalitza Aparicio was featured on the January 2019 Vogue Mexico cover wearing a Christian Dior gown, underneath the words “a star is born” in Spanish, there is a translation of the same text in Mixteco. The cover isn’t her only historic first, she became the first Indigenous American woman and the second Mexican woman to receive a Best Actress Oscar nomination for the role. The 25-year-old actress from Tlaxiaco, Oaxaca  talked about her influence in a video for Vogue, and how she is changing people’s perceptions. “Certain stereotypes are being broken: that only people with a certain profile can be actresses or be on the cover of magazines. Other faces of Mexico are now being recognized. It is something that makes me so happy and proud of my roots.” In 2019, she was appointed the UNESCO goodwill ambassador for indigenous peoples.

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Yukaima González is the First Indigenous Woman to Win the Nayarit Beauty Pageant

Yukaima González, 18, made headlines when she became the first indigenous woman crowned Queen of the 2019 Nayarit State Fair. She hails from La Yesca, a municipality of Nayarit, and is a member of the Wixárika community also known as Huichol. Her win was historic but her participation alone was noteworthy considering indigienous women have historically not been a part of the competition. To participate in the beauty pageant, González moved to Nayarit where she worked as a nanny to help pay for school where she worked on a degree in physical culture and sports at the Autonomous University of Nayarit. For the competition, she stood out when she wore a beaded and bright outfit featuring traditional Wixárika god’s eyes.“In my community, we are losing our [indigenous] language, and residents are ashamed of wearing their traditional clothing,” she told Mexico News Daily. “I’m here so that they’ll feel proud of our roots and who we are.”

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Amazonian Chief Nazaré Advocates for Rain Forest and Indigenous Residents

Ajareaty Waiapione also known Nazaré is one of the few female chiefs of the indigenous Waiapi people and at 59 she’s attending school to educate herself on how to conserve the Amazon rain forest. Her community is made up of about 1,500 people in 92 small villages and after the murder of one of their leaders by illegal gold miners, she’s encouraging the community to rotate villages. But her efforts go beyond that, she also teaches how to safely clear areas of the forest using controlled fires and rotating sites also allows the forest to regenerate. As an older student, she hopes to inspire other community members to seek education and she remains an outspoken and key figure in the movement to preserve the rain forest.

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Radio Indígena Serves Indigenous Communities in Mexico and Central America

Radio Indígena releases 40 hours of original programming every week as one of the first radio stations in the U.S. catering to the indigenous community. The station is hosted/run by the Mixteco Indígena Community Organizing Project (MICOP), a nonprofit organization providing health services, humanitarian support, and language interpretation to indigenous communities living in California. In California, one-third of farm workers speak indigenous languages so the programming caters to them, with content primarily Mixteco, as well as Zapoteco, Triqui, Nahuatl, and Spanish. On their site, they state the station “creates a voice for the indigenous community that too often experiences social isolation and deprivation of rights within the community in general.”

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Indigenous Maka People Elect First Female Leader, Tsiweyenki

Tsiweyenki, also known as Gloria Elizeche, took on the role of chief of the Maka people in Paraguay following the death of her husband and long-time leader, Andrés Chemei. She took on the role since they had no children and traditionally it was passed down from father to son. The Maka is one of 20 indigenous communities that remain in Paraguay with a combined population of 120,000. Like most women, indigenous or otherwise, she will multi-task, taking on the role of principal of a primary and secondary school, leader for a labor union and soccer team and head the local Baptist church. As one of the first female chiefs in Paraguay, she’s living proof it’s never too late to make history. wp_*posts

Indigenous Teenage Climate Activist Empowers Communities

Artemisa Xakriabá is a 19-year-old indigenous climate activist leading global efforts to thwart the harmful effects of climate change. From São João das Missões, Brazil, she’s a representative of the Global Alliance of Territorial Communities for indigenous communities and she participated in the first march for indigenous women this year.During the protest, they took to the streets of the capital in Brasília to denounce President Bolsonaro’s destructive environmental policies that have allegedly led to the fires destroying the Amazon. “We fight for our Mother Earth because the fight for Mother Earth is the mother of all other fights,” Xakriabá said during a climate strike in New York City this year. “We are fighting for your lives. We are fighting for our lives. We are fighting for our sacred territory. But we are being persecuted, threatened, murdered, only for protecting our own territories. We cannot accept one more drop of indigenous blood spilled.”

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Vogue Mexico Features Indigenous Women for Its 20th Anniversary Cover

https://twitter.com/romanscohen/status/1270468821761982464?s=20

Vogue Mexico released six covers in late 2019 and three feature indigenous women from various parts of Latin America. The first cover features Abigail Mendoza,  a famous Zapotec chef from Oaxaca who owns Tlamanalli, a restaurant the New York Times has called one of the best in the world. The other covers include four indigenous Bolivians female cooks turned alpinists known as Las Cholitas as well as the ‘Rarámuri runner’ María Lorena Ramírez,  an indigenous woman who won an ultramarathon in huaraches. “When I travel through Latin America, I am always asked what Vogue is doing to open the way for women to workspaces and prevent sexist stereotypes,” Karla Martínez de Salas, Editorial Director of Vogue México y Latinoamérica, wrote in the magazine. “I hope that the stories we present in this anniversary edition inspire women to dream big, to start with small changes and, above all, to connect with their roots, accepting their unique beauty and celebrating their originality.”

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