Coloniality at work: The ongoing oppression of Indigenous women living in Peru

• In Event: Indigenous Women, Coloniality, Gender Oppression, and Political Subjectivities

Abstract

The actualization of human rights with historically marginalized populations has been uneven across the Globe. Contours of citizenship have created barriers for Indigenous women (IW) in actualizing and activating their rights in both the Global South and North, including Perú. Indigenous Women (IW) in Perú are often understood as living in the margins, and at the intersection of some of the most oppressive categories. Despite numerous international treaties, IW's social positioning is reflective of the colonial hierarchy. Information remains scarce on the social, political, and economic lives of IW in Perú. This presentation aims to fill this gap and explores the failure of current policies and legislation to protect the rights of IW, gathered during our Critical Document Analysis (CDA) portion of the research. In this study, CDA was used to provide a historical context for our analysis, particularly of the role of government and NGOs in determining IW’s position in the colonial matrix. More specifically, CDA was used to examine how Government laws, legislation, regulatory initiatives, and policies directly and indirectly impacted Indigenous Peoples and women (e.g., housing, childcare, abortion, education, labour and employment etc.) and to NGO’s grey literature including policy documents, mission statements, program objectives, intervention frameworks etc were used as data. Hence providing a historical timeline that revealed how process of racialization was codified to support the creation of ‘White’ and ‘Indian’ racial identities to ensure the on-going marginalization of IW thereby preventing the actualization of their human rights

Author

• Giovanni A Hernandez, York University