This article explores Wiwa female spiritual advocacy in the Colombian Caribbean region during the postconflict period. The methodologies and practices of indigenous communities have been underappreciated in transitional justice literature about land and property rights. This article seeks to analyze spiritual and territorial advocacy by local indigenous women for the defense of their lands and their collective rights. We examine intercultural and intersectional methodologies, rituals and recollection as strategies for clarifying the ‘truth.’ These methodologies attempt to revitalize indigenous women’s advocacy for sacred sites of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta affected by armed conflict. These spiritual advocacy practices are one expression of the Law of Origin, the customary law as a form of telling the truth. Here, we explain how participatory action research should be used to include female indigenous techniques and conduct ethnographic observations.

Colombia has a comprehensive system of truth, justice and reparation stemming from its history with the justice and peace process and its most recent peace agreement. Although indigenous women are the most affected before, during and after conflict, their participation is marginalized within this political context. This article discusses how Colombian transitional justice can be reconfigured when indigenous women's practices and knowledge travel 'from the margins' to the center. We seek to demonstrate how these practices legitimize gender and other types of violence in the name of tradition and also how indigenous women's experiences go beyond the gendered perspective of violence as a 'weapon of war.' Working within the context of the peace process, we gathered data through learning and teaching techniques with indigenous women in three indigenous contexts (Sierra, Pan-Amazon region and Choco ´). Our focus is on the interaction between local transitional justice practices and the violence against indigenous women, their resistance practices and the peacebuilding agendas used to implement transitional justice in Colombia.

No abstract

No abstract

This article explores the corporeal and testimonial memories of a group of female indigenous ex-combatants and victims in the Colombian Caribbean and Amazon. Although these groups have often been analyzed in the transitional justice literature, our primary objective is to analyze two local processes for retrieving indigenous women’s memories and possible feminist participatory action research methodologies in the Colombian postconflict context. We examined empowering intercultural and intersectional methodologies to promote the political participation of indigenous women – both ‘victims’ and ‘perpetrators’ – in the Colombian Truth Commission implemented after the peace agreement was enacted. We explain how participatory action research should be used, including techniques such as indigenous women’s body mapping, creating testimonial spaces and conducting ethnographic observations. The article is based on a transitional justice ‘from below’ perspective as well as local transitional justice practices.