Yasso Kanti Bhattachan

Yasso Kanti Bhattachan is a Nepali Indigenous activist belonging to the Thakali Indigenous peoples, whose ancestral lands are located in Thasang, the Southern Maitang (Mustang) in Nepal’s Trans-Himalayan region. Yasso is co-founder of the National Indigenous Women’s Federation (NIWF), founding Chair and now Advisor of Thakali Women Association (TWA), and currently the Vice-chair of the National Indigenous Women Forum (NIWF), a Regional Council member of the Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development (APWLD), and the South Asia Focal Person of the Asian Indigenous Women’s Network (AIWN).

APWLD interviewed Yasso in December 2020 and below is her story.

Becoming a feminist and women human rights defender

I became involved in fighting for Indigenous women’s rights at a young age, almost more than four decades ago, by joining the Thakali Yuba Pariwar (“Thakali Youth Family”) as a secretary.

Thakali is one of the mountain Indigenous Peoples of Nepal. My ancestral land is in Thasang, the Southern Maitang (Mustang) in the Trans-Himalayan Region of Nepal. Our population is small, around 10,500 worldwide, and we have a very strong tradition of customary self-governing systems and institutions, including 13 Ghampa (head wo/man), and Dhukor or Dhkuri (rotating credit association). However, the Indigenous Peoples of Nepal, including the Thakalis, lost collective ownership and control over their lands, territories, and resources with the nationalisation of forests in 1956, and management of natural resources after the establishment of the Annapurna Conservation Area in 1992. Both government and NGOs have not reached us in the mountain areas and have been trying to colonise or assimilate us with the dominant Hindu society and culture. I was aware of the discrimination against us since I was a child, and I could sense that our community members were treated differently and horribly. This is why I joined the Thakali Youth at a young age and have worked for the preservation and promotion of the Thakali language, tradition, and culture.

I pursued a post-graduate degree in Women Studies at Tribhuvan University and systematically learned the colonial and Hindu patriarchal norms and values, the structural violence and discrimination against women, and the intersectionality between women and the Indigenous Peoples. 

I became involved in the struggle for the protection and promotion of the collective rights of Indigenous Women and Girls. I also co-founded the National Indigenous Women’s Federation, where I now work as an advisor. At the Federation and Forum, we work for movement building to promote Indigenous women’s human rights across Nepal. We lobby for democratic and civic spaces and recognition of Indigenous women from the community to national and international levels. We have been focusing our work on Indigenous women’s and girls’ capacity building, awareness raising, lobbying, and advocacy. We are dedicated to promoting the collective rights of the Indigenous Peoples, especially the Indigenous Women and Girls.

Because of persistent lobbying and advocating by the Indigenous Peoples’ movement including the Indigenous women’s movement, we were able to pressure the Nepal government to ratify ILO Convention 169 and adopt the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) in 2007, addressing Indigenous Peoples’ rights over lands, territories, and natural resources from thereon. We were also able to submit the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) Shadow Report in 2011, for the first time in the history of Nepal, and then again in 2018. Based on our advocacy, the CEDAW in its Concluding Observation issued on 14 November 2018 to the state party of Nepal, recommended in paragraph 41a to “Amend the Constitution to explicitly recognise the rights of indigenous women, in particular their right to self-determination, in line with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.” We are exerting pressure on our government for its meaningful implementation.  

We were able to help endangered Indigenous peoples like Bankaria with a population of 86 people and 21 households. In early 2000, we lobbied the government and acquired citizenship and certificates for 23 members who are Bankaria indigenous men and women, considered endangered Indigenous Peoples. We were able to have the government sign a contract giving back what rightfully belonged to the Indigenous Peoples—their ancestral land and forest, though not permanently but for a 20-year prescribed period of six hectares of land. 

Racism, Brahmanism and patriarchy have been barriers for Indigenous Women like me to participate in the Indigenous People’s movement in Nepal. Many women’s movements were controlled by women from the dominant caste, and we were never invited to join those movements, nor were our identity as Indigenous women recognised. The Indigenous Peoples’ movement were also dominated by Indigenous males. In recent years, the situation has slightly improved. 

I would say, for us, the biggest challenge is from the Government, as they are reluctant to change the Constitution, laws, and policies and address the issues of collective rights of Indigenous Peoples, especially indigenous Women in line with the UNDRIP. We also need to fight against racist traditions left by our colonisers, especially with internalised racism among many Indigenous Peoples. There is also a need to decolonise Hindu ideology and expunge its patriarchy. In Nepal, patriarchy exists in its most extreme form. Unfortunately, we are alleged to be separatists, anti-nationalists, ethnocentric, and communal because we talk about our distinct collective identity, our lands, language, custom, and tradition. Being Indigenous women, we face structural, systematic, linguistic, and cultural violence. We need to fight against exploitation disguised in development discourse by claiming self-determined development.

The main political parties and the government corrupt our peoples, and criminalise our, i.e. Indigenous Peoples’ custom, tradition, knowledge, skills,  technology, and practices. The government has banned homemade liquor on which around 94 per cent of Indigenous Women’s livelihood depends. Additionally, during the COVID-19 crisis, the government expanded the roads in Kathmandu Valley. Protests are going on. A lot of activists and fighters have been arrested, and a lot of our elders and children have been traumatised. Still, they continue the strike to protect their land and environment. At the community level, Indigenous Peoples’ are demanding for implementation of Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) in development projects implemented by the government and private business companies, in many cases with support from international development partners and financial agencies. Our demand is for self-determined development, but the non-Indigenous peoples allege us as anti-development.

Growing together with APWLD

I have been with APWLD since 2017 as a member of the Regional Council (ReC). I also joined the Asia Pacific Feminist Forum and the General Assembly as a voting member.

As NIWF also works on issues such as social justice, gender justice, development justice, and climate justice, we share APWLD’s perspectives. I lacked the vocabulary to accurately describe our work and demands before joining APWLD. After taking part in APWLD’s work and training, I learned the terminology, such as economic justice, Development Justice, and climate justice and many more.

APWLD helped NIWF to expand the scope of our work from the displacement of Indigenous women and Indigenous Peoples in the name of national parks, national forests, wildlife conservation, conservation areas, hydropower dams, high voltage electricity transmission lines, and road expansion. We were able to use Feminist Participatory Action Research (FPAR) to help Majhi women see their compromised land rights. 

I appreciate APWLD’s practice of equal opportunity among members for participation and communication as well as addressing the intersectionality among different constituencies. I was able to present Indigenous Peoples’ and Indigenous women’s issues and their situations at APWLD meetings. I also learned from other sisters about their countries’ contexts and movements. I generally enjoy APWLD’s work culture and teamwork very much. This is why I committed myself to the role of a member of ReC, APWLD’s highest decision-making body. Due to this engagement, I became more connected with feminist sisters from other countries and have implemented learning from the meetings and APWLD’s training in our activism, such as FPAR. With FPAR, we were able to help the Indigenous peoples see their rights were being compromised and connect them with the local governments. 

Building the feminist movement in Nepal

We brought the Indigenous Peoples into the United Nations (UN) mechanism through APWLD’s network. APWLD has been sensitive to integrating the collective rights of Indigenous women as enshrined in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) and International Labour Organization (ILO) Convention 169. Building a feminist movement among Indigenous communities is Indigenous feminism. 

We worked with Indigenous Women to reclaim their lands, territorial resources, and right to self-determination, autonomy, and a self-government system that has a close connection with a distinct collective identity, customary livelihood, culture, and an egalitarian society. Also, we work with them to fight back against colonisation, Brahmanism, colonial patriarchy, and internalised colonial ideologies and practices. We work with them to deconstruct colonisation so that it would be easy for them to understand their collective and individual rights. We worked to raise awareness of Indigenous Women and Girls, for example, the young Majhi women; and now, we have well-informed Majhi researchers and activists to lobby and advocate for their rights in the villages. They are the hope and new blood. It is with APWLD’s assistance that we have been able to accomplish this. 

We have been using APWLD’s analytical framework GFMP (Globalisation, Fundamentalism, Militarism and Patriarchy), especially globalisation, militarism and patriarchy, in our movement in Nepal. I enhanced my familiarity with these terms, and I have been using them in every workshop. In Nepal, the mainstream feminist movement focuses on individual rights, family rights, and group rights, but neglects Indigenous women’s collective rights, so Indigenous women’s fight is profound. Inspired by the analytical method of GFMP, we work against all forms of colonisation, capitalism, imperialism, feudalism, and both colonial and Hindu patriarchy. 

Through the years, APWLD has built solidarity with its members in different Asia-Pacific countries. We, the National Indigenous Women Forum, as a member of APWLD, have been advocating for gender development, Indigenous Peoples’ human rights, social justice, and economic justice with APWLD’s assistance. Using APWLD’s anger-hope-action model, I was able to channel Indigenous people’s anger, help them see hope, and work with them to take action.

Ways moving forward

Still, challenges are numerous, some existing for generations and some newly emerged or emerging. Land grabbing, forced displacement, and assimilation have been constant for centuries. Extreme poverty, unemployment, food insecurity, conflict, victimisation from climate change, ill effects of development aggression, militarisation, globalisation, and the COVID-19 pandemic are relatively new phenomena. These all have a most direct impact on Indigenous Peoples, including Indigenous women and girls, because we often rely on forests, waters, wetlands, and pasture mountains for resources. We are most vulnerable to natural disasters, global warming and climate change. So, we, Indigenous Women of Nepal, are angry, but we have hope in claiming our collective and individual human rights and for this, we are taking action together with the community members and with support from international partners.

I hope APWLD will look more into Indigenous Women’s collective rights, Indigenous Feminism, self-determination, autonomy, and customary self-government system in the future and develop strong and practical frameworks that also include decolonisation. APWLD can develop more strategies and responses to help Indigenous communities during times like the COVID-19 crisis to help them maintain their livelihood, get access to reliable medical information, etc. Although my focus is on indigenous women, no one should be left behind—children, LGBTQI+, people with disabilities, etc, need our attention as well. Together, we can make a difference.

I strongly believe that We Indigenous Peoples are solutions, not problems, and collectively we can make a difference. Leave no one, including Indigenous women, behind.