rebel shamans:
indigenous women confront empirevisual talk by Max Dashú of the Suppressed Histories Archives
“Lozen is…strong as a man, braver than most, and cunning in strategy.
Lozen is a shield to her people.” --Apache chief Victorio"Grandy Nanny didn't catch bullets for you alone." --Jamaican saying about Nanny of the Maroons
"Viva la Santa de Cabora!" --Yaqui rebels storming the customhouse at Nogales, 1896
Priestesses, diviners and medicine women stand out as leaders of aboriginal liberation movements against conquest, empire, and cultural colonization.
Spiritual spheres of power have been a crucial staging area for women’s political leadership and for challenging systems of domination on many levels, including the battleground of culture.
This visual presentation looks at how indigenous women draw on their cultural traditions to resist colonization --and how, by virtue of who they are and where they stand in the social order, their personal access to direct, transformative power makes the spiritual political.
Veleda of the Bructerii (Netherlands), Dahia al-Kahina (Tunisia), the Kumari of Taleju (Nepal), Jeanne d'Arc (France), Tang Saier (China), Juana Icha (Peru), Kimba Vita (Congo), Maria Candelaria (Chiapas), Queen Nanny of the Maroons (Jamaica), Cécile Fatiman (Haiti), Antonia Luzia (Brazil), Toypurina (Tongva Nation, California), the Prophetess of Chupu (Chumash Nation), Wanankhucha (Zigula/ "Somali Bantu"), Lozen (Apache Nation), Teresa de Cabora (Mayo, Sonora), Nehanda Nyakasikana (Zimbabwe), Muhumusa (Uganda),
Nomtetha Nkwenkwe (!Xhosa, South Africa). And more.
"Neither bishop nor priest, taxes nor king." --Maria Candelaria, Chiapas
"Do you wonder why the tribe fights the forces of such a government?
My poor Indians! They are the bravest and most persecuted people on earth!
They will fight for their rights until they win or are wiped out.
God help them! there are few of them left." --Teresa Urrea, la Santa
de Cabora, shown at right healing people in El Paso, Texas.
Teresa had been arrested and forcibly deported for her activism by the dictator
Porfirio Diaz,who called her "the most dangerous girl in Mexico." She went on with
her political organizing, and co-authored El Plan de Tomóchic, which denounced
the genocide of the Yaqui Nation, urged restoration of the Liberal Constitution
of 1857, and called for abolition of "all laws or social practices that
maintain inequality based on gender, race, nationality or class.""We have saints in Kongo as well." --Kimpa Vita
Articles about female shamans who led resistance movements:
Wanakhucha, the mganga priestess who led the Zigula exodus out of slavery in Somalia;
the Bagirwa oracles of Nyabingi on the Uganda / Rwanda borderlands,and a general discussion of Priestesses, Power, and Politics .
Suppressed Histories Series: Real Women, Global Vision
Copyright 2006 Max Dashu
