Indigenous Women's Network

The Indigenous Women's Network (IWN) was formed in 1985 in Yelm, Washington, to promote and support self-determination for indigenous women throughout the Americas and Pacific basin. The IWN addresses problems occurring in indigenous societies today, including sexism, racism, and classism, both within and outside those societies. The IWN emerged from a social and historical context of colonization and works to achieve its goals of social change through strategic coalitions and programs.

The 1975 Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act and the 1978 American Indian Religious Freedom Act released indigenous populations from many of the restrictions accompanying colonization, including status as domestic dependent nations. This ushered in an era of opportunity to reassert traditional values, art, language, ceremony, and knowledge. Indigenous activism began to focus on the environment and who defines the environment as an organizing principle to reclaim these traditional practices. As Native activists joined to discuss common problems in their communities and as the larger societies of the world networks formed, the IWN was established.

The IWN is a mission-driven organization with clearly defined goals of social justice. These goals include nurturing grassroots leadership among Native women; achieving self-determination to regain status in society; honoring their traditions and cultures to recover rights to health, land, and biological diversity; and recognition of ancestral properties and territories, both cultural and intellectual.

Focused on women, families, and communities, the IWN believes its goals support the inherent human rights of all indigenous peoples throughout the world, and IWN actively joins other groups in forming coalitions for social change. Foundational to IWN strategies for change is the tenet of honoring and protecting Mother Earth as well as respecting the wisdom of elders. Sovereignty, spirituality, sus-tainability, and sharing traditional knowledge are strategies for change to ensure the socioeconomic well-being of future generations. The scope of activities needed to achieve these goals ranges from the local to the global.

Accomplishments of the IWN include publication of the magazine Indigenous Woman since 1991, the Our Sovereignty and Human Rights program, and the Our Healthy Communities and Healthy Bodies program. The IWN has worked with the Indigenous Environmental Network to create and support Honor the Earth, which actively strategizes for social change through the environmental justice framework requiring recognition of the link between poverty and pollution. Reproductive justice is promoted through coalition work with the Native American Women's Health Education Resource Center. Reproductive rights are inseparable from any discussion of Native self-determination and central to Native women's ability to reaffirm status within their own societies.