In Praise of Matriarchal Environmental Wisdom

March 8^th, 2025

Since 1911, March 8^th has been International Women’s Day, observed around the world as a day to recognize women’s contributions to society and work towards gender parity. In the United States (and the United Kingdom and Australia), March is now designated as Women’s History Month. The theme for Women’s History Month in 2025 is “Moving Forward Together! Women Educating & Inspiring Generations.” This theme celebrates the positive influence of women in education, mentorship, and leadership. Globally, in Indigenous, traditional, and local communities, education often reflects a holistic approach to learning that integrates cultural, spiritual, and ecological dimensions. Indigenous women play a vital role in the preservation and transmission of this Indigenous and local knowledge (ILK), including traditional environmental knowledge (TEK) on critical issues like sustainable natural resource management, water governance, food production, healthcare, and climate change mitigation and adaptation. Women’s History Month is an opportunity to acknowledge and celebrate this matriarchal environmental wisdom and its contributions to preserving critical bio-cultural heritage in local communities and beyond.

The Origins of Women’s History Month

In the United States, Women’s History was a virtually nonexistent topic in the K-12 curriculum, also absent from the general public consciousness, as recently as the 1970s. In 1969, women’s rights advocate Laura X (born Laura Rand Orthwein) organized a march in Berkeley, California, on International Women’s Day, kickstarting what would become Women’s History Month. By 1978, the Education Task Force of the Sonoma County (California) Commission on the Status of Women initiated a “Women’s History Week” celebration to address the neglect of women’s history in public narratives and, in February 1980, President Jimmy Carter declared the week of March 8, 1980, as National Women’s History Week. Congress passed Public Law 100-9 in 1987 (updated on February 23, 2024). Since 1995, every president has proclaimed March Women’s History Month, with a special Presidential Proclamation issued every year honoring the extraordinary achievements of American women.

Further left out of public consciousness had been a recognition of the important contributions Indigenous women have made to the United States and the globe. As First Nations Senior Program Officer Montoya A. Whiteman (Cheyenne and Arapaho) highlights in her piece on Women’s History Month: An Indigenous Perspective:

The particularly harsh realities that face Indigenous women are significant. A recent article by Dr. Robin Whyatt from Columbia University’s Department of Environmental Health Sciences, denounces violence against Native American women as a public health crisis – more than half experience sexual violence at some point during their lifetimes and one in three is raped. Between 86 and 96 percent of this abuse is committed by non-Indigenous perpetrators who are rarely brought to justice.

Relatedly, an analysis of earning trends undertaken by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR) finds that, under prevailing conditions, Native women, many of whom are the primary breadwinners for their families, will not reach pay equity with non-Hispanic White men until 2144. Despite these challenges, Native American perspectives on both health and traditional ecological knowledge are increasingly being recognized. Indigenous women’s key role “in safeguarding ecosystems, maintaining biocultural integrity and designing collective futures to ensure human, multispecies and environmental justice and equity” has been repeatedly highlighted by the Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Their important contributions to Indigenous education, mentorship, and leadership must be supported and celebrated throughout the whole year, not only in March!

Matriarchal Environmental Wisdom

Indigenous communities are not a homogenous group of people; they have diverse cultures and lifestyles in different regions and environments across the globe. Nevertheless, in the intricate tapestry of Indigenous cultures worldwide, women have long held pivotal roles as custodians of traditional knowledge and guardians of biocultural heritage. Indigenous matriarchal traditions around the world place women at the center of familial and societal structures. Lineage, power, and respect flow through the maternal line, as does their Indigenous knowledge systems (IKS), including their Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK).

Indigenous knowledge systems (IKS) are vital repositories of cultural heritage and sustainable practices globally, and at the heart of these systems lie the voices of women. Central to both IKS and TEK is the concept of interconnectedness with the natural world. Indigenous peoples view themselves as integral parts of ecosystems, with reciprocal relationships and responsibilities towards the land, plants, animals, and natural elements. 

Often facilitated by women, Indigenous education emphasizes a holistic eco-centric curriculum that integrates cultural, spiritual, and ecological dimensions. Traditional knowledge is primarily passed down informally through hands-on experience, storytelling, songs, and rituals, fostering cultural identity and environmental stewardship. Women play a central role in this process, mentoring younger generations in skills like farming, herbal medicine, and weaving. Intergenerational learning is key to preserving this heritage and female elders, as knowledge keepers, are highly respected.

Furthermore, many Indigenous traditional practices offer effective climate solutions, such as sustainable agriculture systems and climate-resilient water management. By safeguarding key ecosystems that act as carbon sinks and protect biodiversity, Indigenous Peoples provide a vital environmental service to the global community. As the climate crisis intensifies, matriarchal environmental wisdom and sustainable practices provide valuable climate solutions that can advance mitigation efforts, enhance adaptation strategies, and build resilience. This knowledge can also complement scientific data with precise place-based information gathered over generations of detailed observations, which is proven critical to evaluating climate change scenarios. Yet, Indigenous environmental defenders are increasingly paying for their efforts with their lives.

A Legacy of Colonialism and Violence

Valdelice Veron, one of the leaders of the Guarani-Kaiowá Indigenous People from Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil, has spent her life fighting for her people’s survival, reclaiming their land, and protecting it from deforestation. Valdelice’s father, Marcos Veron, was beaten to death in 2003 in a brutal campaign to dispossess the Guarani-Kaiowá of their ancestral territory to clear the land for the cultivation of sugarcane – a major cause of deforestation in the country. Sugarcane is being used for bioethanol production, of which Brazil is the first exporter in the world. While President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s victory has been celebrated by Indigenous communities and environmentalists, recent events in the country evidence that their fight is far from over.

Another emblematic case in the Americas involves Berta Cáceres, an Indigenous Lenca woman who was murdered in Honduras in 2016. As a student-activist, Berta co-founded the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH) in 1993. In Honduras, one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change in Central America, water governance is a primary concern. Berta fought to stop the construction of a hydroelectric dam on the Gualcarque River, which is part of the sacred ancestral territory of the Lenca Indigenous community. In 2018, partly in response to the death of Berta Cáceres, 24 Latin American and Caribbean countries signed a legally binding pact to protect the rights of environmental defenders.

Across the African continent, Indigenous women are also drawing on their matriarchal environmental wisdom to protect their communities’ bio-cultural heritage. The Yaaku women of Kenya’s Mukogodo Forest are an emblematic case study. The Mukogodo Forest in central Laikipia County is Kenya’s largest national forest reserve, and the only one under the exclusive management of an Indigenous community – the Yaaku. Yaaku women are revitalizing traditional practices, including beekeeping, to boost their economy and increase their households’ food security. My own research on the intersection of gender, climate, and security in the Mukogodo Forest confirms Yaaku women’s important contributions to their community’s cultural continuity and environmental sustainability despite significant challenges.

Similarly, Pacific Island women faced with climate-driven existential threats are leading innovative adaptation projects building on Indigenous and traditional local knowledge. Vanuatu, an ethnically diverse Pacific archipelago of 83 islands is a case in point. The World Risk Index for 2024 ranks Vanuatu as the most vulnerable nation to extreme weather events and seismic activity, including cyclones, earthquakes, sea level rise, and flooding. Recent studies have documented Vanuatu women’s important work in food production, household maintenance, and role advising and shaping responses to climate change and disaster risk reduction. Women’s crucial contribution to conservation efforts across the Pacific Islands has also been highlighted by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

A Call to Greater Action

The United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII) was established on July 28, 2000 by Resolution 2000/22. The UNPFII is a high-level advisory body to the Economic and Social Council mandated to address Indigenous issues related to economic and social development, culture, the environment, education, health, and human rights. In addition to these six mandated areas, each of the 24 yearly sessions the Forum has held to date has been thematically focused on a specific issue. “Indigenous Women” was the special theme of the third session, held in New York in 2004.

A resolution on Indigenous women was adopted in March of the following year at the 49^th Session of the Commission of the Status of the Women (CSW). This session, also known as the Beijing+10 meeting, was the first ever on Indigenous women by the CSW. Representatives of Indigenous communities were led by Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchú, a Guatemalan K’iche’ Maya human rights activist and the official spokesperson for the United Nations International Decade of Indigenous Peoples (1994-2003). The CSW has discussed and documented the challenges and opportunities facing Indigenous women in multiple subsequent sessions. So have many other United Nations bodies, initiatives, and frameworks.

Noteworthy examples include the most recent UN Biodiversity Conference (COP16) in Cali, Colombia, where nations agreed to formally recognize and expand the role of Indigenous Peoples and local communities in preserving biodiversity and operationalizing a mechanism to share benefits from digital genetic information. The ongoing UN Indigenous Languages Decade (2022-2032) contributes to this effort underscoring the importance of Indigenous languages in transmitting traditional knowledge. The loss of Indigenous language is acknowledged as being directly related to the loss of biodiversity, reminding us of the extraordinary relationship between nature and culture. 

As Inger Andersen, UN Environment Programme’sExecutive Director notes in her introduction to the agency’s 2024 Annual Report, “Temperatures are rising, ecosystems are disappearing, and pollution remains a deadly threat…The world must pull together to build a fairer, more sustainable planet.” A necessary step in addressing these global challenges effectively and equitably is stepping up our efforts to empower Indigenous women, protect their cultural rights, and safeguard the traditional ecological wisdom generated by Indigenous, traditional, and local communities.

Valdelice Veron, Berta Cáceres, Rigoberta Menchú, and the countless Indigenous women who fight to defend the peoples and lands of their ancestral territories, are shining examples of that premise. By valuing women’s roles in education, mentorship, and leadership – as we are all exhorted to do this Women’s History Month – Indigenous communities sustain traditions, ecosystems, and cultural identities across generations. Recognizing and amplifying their matriarchal environmental wisdom is not only essential for the preservation of cultural heritage, but also vital for fostering gender equity, social and environmental justice, and sustainable development within Indigenous communities and beyond.