Webinar with Rauna Kuokkanen “Holding ourselves Responsible: Dismantling the Binary between Violence Against Women and Self‑Determination in Indigenous Communities”
NOGVIS (Nordic Network on Gendered Violence in Sámi and Inuit Communities) is a Nordic research network that includes key researchers from Sweden, Norway, Finland, Greenland and Denmark.
The network works closely with the Saami Council and the Inuit Circumpolar Council Greenland as central partners. The aim is to strengthen and further develop the Nordic research community on gendered violence in Indigenous communities by establishing this network as a platform for knowledge exchange and collaboration between researchers and Indigenous representatives.
The NOGVIS webinar series spotlights the issue of Gendered violence in Sámi and Inuit communities from different perspectives. The webinars are broadcasted digitally on Zoom and are open to policymakers, professionals working with violence prevention, researchers and anyone interested in Indigenous health and equality.
In the nest webinar, presenter is Rauna Kuokkanen, Research Professor, Arctic Indigenous Politics, University of Lapland, Finland:
Violence against Indigenous women is a global concern yet in many parts of the world it remains a little studied question. There is a lack of statistics, detailed reports, and disaggregated data on the extent of violence against Indigenous women especially in Africa, Asia, the South Pacific, Latin America and most of the Arctic. A long-standing major problem in all studies is that violence against Indigenous women has been categorically separated from questions of self-determination and treated as a social or criminal issue. Yet globally, for Indigenous women, self-determination (both individual and collective) and gendered violence are central and pressing issues and, as many argue, indivisible.
In this webinar, Professor Rauna Kuokkanen presents her work that connects violence against Indigenous women with the question of self-determination and shows that collective self-determination is not possible without upholding and ensuring individual self-determination, including bodily autonomy, of all community members.
Photo of Rauna Kuokkanen: University of Lapland.