Aboriginal - Girls Action Foundation

88 TJ Lightfoot
By TJ Lightfoot
Real Indigenous women’s leadership to me means engaging in random acts of
resistance to colonialism everyday. To me it means not relying on chiefs or politics
to influence our communities. I think that Indigenous women are in many positions of
leadership that often go unrecognized. Native women’s leadership is reflected in the
face of youth who learn how to treat each other by role modeling the strong women
in their lives. Before colonization women took on strong roles within our families and
communities. Since the onset of colonization our women have been degraded, silenced
and erased from our histories and pushed to the side. However, there exists a paradox
in that while our women are often taken out of the bigger picture, we are also the ones
holding it together. Our leaders are the women who have dug trenches in Wounded
Knee; they have mended lobster traps in Burnt Church, occupied airstrips in Goose
Bay, taught Indigenous languages to their babies, and have blown the whistle on secret
sterilizations. The lists of things that reflect leadership in an Indigenous sense are endless
but I will attempt to outline a few of the most important as I see them.
Leadership has been reflected in the wonderful Indigenous women who have taught us
compassion and pride in our culture, they’ve taught us our history, languages and lead
us through our traditions. These teachers are barely ever recognized for the priceless
gifts they pass onto us. In educating us about colonization, they give us tools to fight
for a better life for Indigenous people everywhere. They encourage us to fight for our
individual nations as well as for Native people as a collective. These are means that
will ensure our survival when the world seems out to destroy what it truly means to
be an Indigenous person. These women help us find our many roles in the world. True
leadership, Indigenous women have shown me, comes without title and without thanks.
It means sleepless nights worrying about your actions and its impact on everyone. The
core of this leadership is all about the collective well being of a group of people and being
willing to make sacrifices a lot of the time.
For me personally I see leadership in the women from our communities. These women
(self identified) are women like my Migitjoo (grandmother) who have passed on the
desire to take care of our family and community. She has taught her children and