Women of the Earth

Fabrícia Sabanê is the coordinator of the Associação das Guerreiras Indígenas de Rondônia (AGIR), an organisation working alongside Indigenous women in the State of Rondônia, Brazil, to help them organise and protect their territories and cultures. They are the warrior women fighting for political action.

Can you tell me about AGIR and how it was created? What is your role within AGIR?

AGIR is an association of Indigenous women from 56 communities in the state of Rondônia. It was created in 2015 by the demand to have an organisation that gave greater visibility to Indigenous women - especially taking the struggle and aspirations of Indigenous women beyond the territories to municipal, state and national levels.

Currently, my role within AGIR is one of coordination - mainly of political coordination - representing women within the movement and participating in meetings. It involves health, education and the territory. But I also work a lot on the development of the workshops for Indigenous women - not only within the territory, but also for the women who live in urban areas, our relatives who are in areas undergoing demarcation and those who do not have their territory demarcated. We are always there to support them.

What is the struggle of Indigenous women?

With the current government [the 2019-2022 administration] - and not only the current government but other governments as well - our biggest concern is the protection of our territory. We see more and more loggers, miners and large farms that are invading and already inside our territories.

But we are also fighting for our health and our education, which lately has been very precarious. I think not only within my state, but in Brazil as a whole. The situation of Indigenous health and education is very bad, so this is also our struggle. And our struggle is to keep our rights, which, under the government are being harshly attacked by the ruralists’ bills. And more and more, we see that the bills they put on the agenda are precisely those of aggression against our rights. Mainly against our territories. We see that this is our biggest banner of struggle at the moment - our territories.

Why is it important to strengthen Indigenous female protagonism in particular?

Given the current political scenario, strengthening Indigenous women and strengthening the role of Indigenous women is very important because we see that today, those at the forefront of the struggle for territories in Brazil, are Indigenous women. They are the ones who are inside the territories daily, who are there with the children, with the elders, seeing all the needs of the territory - our education and our health. It is the Indigenous warrior women who are there saying: “I do not want this within my territory. My territory is important for the preservation of our culture and for the preservation of our spirituality. It is from our territories that we get our food, it is from our territory that we source the materials for our crafts.”

Women are acting as the shields of the territories, going through complicated situations because they are protecting the territories, so empowering them is very important and this is a job that AGIR has been doing. AGIR has been strengthening Indigenous women politically.

Can you tell me about the importance of including Indigenous women in decision-making within their territories? And also, what is the importance of strengthening the network of Indigenous women?

More and more we are seeing women there, fighting head-on, and we don’t want that within our territory. We want our territory protected. So, each time we have women within these decision-making spaces, it strengthens our territory, and it strengthens our culture even more. It is very important for the preservation of nature and the Indigenous territory.

We have been noticing a very strong communication network that is being born now, that is ANMIGA [Articulação Nacional das Mulheres Indígenas Guerreiras da Ancestralidade - a national collective of ancestral-Indigenous women warriors involves Indigenous women from all biomes of Brazil - with knowledge, with traditions, with struggles that add up and converge to guarantee Indigenous rights and the lives of Indigenous peoples], which I see as something that came to strengthen the women in the forefront. It is very important to have this network of communication and discussion. Mainly at AGIR, we are working to form our articulation network with women from the state of Rondônia. The state is very big. We have several territories and we need to have this articulation network for us to strengthen ourselves as Indigenous women because we often see our female relatives discouraged for not being able to carry out the work they want to do within the community. And having a strengthening network in which we pour our difficulties and share, it then inspires other women to give ideas, saying: “No, relative. Do it that way. Do it that way and it will work.” Because often something she is trying to do in her territory that is not working, another woman might have tried in her territory, in another way, and succeeded. So having this articulation network, where we can discuss, voice our needs and our problems - then together with other women deliberate this to reach a dynamic that works, is very important. And that ends up strengthening us because many women within the territory have no one to talk to - there is no other friendly shoulder that will listen and support them.

And to see that we have a person there, that people can talk and exchange ideas, this ends up strengthening women to go fighting out there with more determination for territories, for their rights within their community and for the community [as a whole] as well.

Can you talk about the Living Culture and Living Forest project?

When we talked with the women of the Guajará Mirim region, they brought up this issue of them not producing handicrafts - mainly basketry - because they do not have incentives for the production, sale and expansion of handicrafts in their area. We were quite shocked when they told us that they were making baskets just to exchange for used clothes because, within the municipality, there is a good market for these handicrafts. So, we created the TECÊ-AGIR store in 2018, for the Indigenous artisans of the state of Rondônia, aimed at valuing and encouraging them to produce handicrafts from the standing forest. TECÊ’s purpose is to recognise and strengthen the ancestral knowledge of the Indigenous artisans of Rondônia through the purchase and sale of bio-jewels produced with sustainable management, raw materials from the forest, generating income for their families and autonomy for women. Specifically, with the Living Culture and Living Forest project, we’re demonstrating that in a sustainable way, working in harmony with nature can generate income without destruction.

How can we support the strengthening of the struggle of Indigenous women?

I think that you, as partners, can strengthen the struggle of women - precisely by giving visibility, talking more and more, and taking this perspective of Indigenous women to the outside world. Because sometimes what we need is to have visibility - [for others] to take our stories of struggle, to take our problems out, to echo our cry for help more and more because with everything that we go through, what we don’t have is enough people who end up multiplying our voice. So giving support and helping with promoting us is very important, that’s what we need.