‘We Women Warriors’: Bringing Needlepoint to a Gunfight
At the outset of the new documentary We Women Warriors, which opens this week in Los Angeles as part of 2012’s DocuWeeks Festival, a group of women in Colombia is seen spooling twine.
The activity takes their minds off the ongoing violence of civil wars that have been a part of daily life in the country since the 1960s. Also, the resulting fabric can be sold to help finance their efforts to reclaim, through nonviolent means, the land that’s rightfully theirs, to peacefully dismantle police barracks that have overtaken their villages, and to mobilize marches to major cities to demonstrate their plight.
“Weaving strengthens unity,” one of the women says in a voiceover, adding: “When it is well made, it doesn't break.”
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In a country where plenty is broken because drug traffickers and paramilitary groups have exploited a weak government, the resolve of its indigenous people has held steady.
Particularly stalwart are three tribal women that filmmaker Nicole Karsin tracked between 2006 through 2009 for We Women Warriors. Through the stories of Doris, Ludis, and Flor Ilva, three women from separate tribes who have become leaders in their communities, Karsin offers a glimpse of hope in one of the region’s bleakest environments.
“I just felt the conflict in Colombia remained very much neglected by the U.S.,” Karsin tells TakePart, noting the attention that was given to conflicts in other parts of the world while she was in South America. “Of course, Iraq was going on at the time, there were many things… [but] the conflict in Colombia’s gone on for nearly 50 years, and it’s the largest humanitarian crisis in the western hemisphere.”
The film conveys both the tragic loss of life that regularly occurs as a result of the violence as well as the tenuous survival of the nation’s 102 indigenous groups. Since they want no part of the wars, tribal people are constantly threatened with extinction. Karsin became keenly familiar with the threat after she arrived in Colombia as an independent journalist in 2002 and witnessed indigenous inhabitants being forcefully relocated and/or subjected to the diminishment of their land through fumigation and occupation. In addition, family and friends are inevitably caught in the crossfire.
With We Women Warriors, Karsin also hopes to forcefully move people—toward action, particularly American audiences.
“The focus is to support indigenous people’s rights and to petition Colombian authorities to respect their rights to not be involved in the conflict, the rights that are guaranteed under international humanitarian law and the Colombian constitution that are not being respected right now,” says Karsin.
The director provided the film as a rough cut for the Colombia National Indigenous Authority to use as evidence to gain greater traction for human rights protection.
“Obviously, the film can’t cover it all, but I just want people to maybe want to learn more [and] to take action so that U.S. policy will actually have some real regard for the human rights in Colombia.”
Who are some of your favorite warrior women? Shout out in COMMENTS.
Related Stories on TakePart:
• 65 Years of the United Nations and Finally an Agency Focused on Women's Rights
• Photo of the Day: Washed Out in Colombia
• Photo of the Day: Giving a Damn About a Dam in Chile
Based in Los Angeles, California, Stephen Saito writes about the movies. His work has appeared in Premiere, the L.A. Times and IFC.com. He recently founded the indie film site The Moveable Fest. Email Stephen | @mfrushmore
