Navigating Webs of Violence and Support: Indigenous Women’s Activism in Manaus, Brazil

• In Event: Feminismos indígenas, violencias y resistencias

Abstract

Based on two months of ethnographic research and twenty interviews with members of the Associação das Mulheres Indígenas do Amazonas (AMIA), this paper illustrates the overlapping violences and networks of support that impact the daily lives of a group of indigenous women activists in Manaus, Brazil. Through the framework of a web of violence, I set out to illustrate the multiple, co-constitutive forms of violence that indigenous women experience as community organizers and residents of an urban space. I contend that this web of violence informs daily social relations inside indigenous women’s homes and spaces of employment, their movement through city streets and on public transportation, and their exchanges with state institutions and officials. The complex, mutually reinforcing logics of gender- and race-based violences, street or everyday violence, and structural violence—all reinforced by the settler-colonial state—result in a multidimensional web of violence that maps onto the urban landscape of Manaus and profoundly complicates indigenous women’s activism. That said, while the lives of members of AMIA are deeply shaped by experiences of trauma and violence, they are also characterized by a strong sense of solidarity and support. I contend that webs of support and violence exist in conjunction with one another and form the foundation upon which AMIA situates its organizing. The networks that these women have crafted in Manaus point to the resilience and drive of indigenous women as they organize to reclaim a place where they can feel safe and proud of their indigenous heritage.

Author

• Emily M Masucci, University of Oregon