‘They Beat Us, We Fly’ : Indigenous Activism Among Women in the Russian North

• This chapter describes how Indigenous Sami and Nenets women from the Russian North join in different kinds of civic activism in order to resist structures of state power. Such structures are the ground of both economic underprivilege and cultural marginalization. Soviet policy of forceful collectivization of Indigenous economy was justified with representations of Indigenous people of the North as occupying lower evolutionary stages of a linear historical development. In correspondence to this image, the emancipation of Soviet women condemned and criminalized a number of widely spread social practices where women were presented as suppressed and victims, like polygamy, bride kidnapping, and bride wealth. In its effects on indigenous population, Soviet emancipation policies have similarities to Western strands of feminism, despite USSR’s rejection of the latter. Indigenous feminist studies provide critical perspectives that illuminate these similarities and their long-standing destructive outcomes for indigenous communities. Nenets women from Yamal Peninsula and Sami women from Murmansk Region have played a significant role in the movement for Indigenous rights at regional and national levels. While Sami people also engage in women activism, Nenets still lack women’s organizations. The chapter analyzes this development within the context of Soviet gender policies applying perspectives offered by Indigenous feminist studies and critical social theory.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Social och ekonomisk geografi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Social and Economic Geography (hsv//eng)

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

kap (subject category)