Heather Gies: Facing Violence, Resistance Is Survival for Indigenous Women

The resistance of women, especially indigenous women, is key to fighting for alternatives to capitalism and colonialism.

Community leader Yolanda Oqueli urges riot police not to use violence against community members of La Puya. She was shot in June 2013 as a result of her role in the resistance. In their movements, women not only fight against gendered injustices, but also demand wider societal transformation to a system that in a system that doesn’t work for them as women – even though as a system it is working exactly how it’s supposed to. That is, the inequality and commodification that drives the system exploits woman (as reproductive laborers) to enable all other labor within capitalism, keeping women in a disadvantaged position. At the same time, women’s participation in social struggle is also a way of asserting and vocalizing their own worth in a system that doesn’t value and seeks to eradicate them.