Abstract
Indigenous women play a crucial role in safeguarding their customary territories and the environment of their communities. However, they are often positioned as subaltern subjects marginalized within legal discourse as well as within the narratives of resistance themselves. This study integrates Indigenous Feminism and subaltern theory to analyze Indigenous women’s resistance to territorial dispossession. Existing scholarship has often subsumed such resistance within generalized ecofeminist discourses, thereby neglecting the specific cosmological, spiritual, and cultural logics that underpin Indigenous women’s actions. Through a qualitative socio-legal approach, this research examines the resistance practices of Indigenous women in Mollo (East Nusa Tenggara), Kendeng (Central Java), and Enggros (Papua). The findings demonstrate that Indigenous women’s resistance does not always manifest in overtly confrontational or formal legal forms, but rather through everyday practices, cultural regeneration, and spirituality. The dominance of modern epistemology tends to overlook these forms of resistance, resulting in the delegitimization of Indigenous women’s voices. Therefore, repositioning the subaltern must involve recognizing Indigenous women’s knowledge and political practices, both within their communities and in state policy discourse.
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