Just this past Sunday (01.21.18), I purposefully participated in the Honoring Indigenous Women Leading The Women’s March to the Polls in downtown Phoenix. I took my five-year old daughter, Zoey because I wanted her to see all of the strong women standing up for gender equality. I explained to Zoey that women are still not treated the same as men and that the women at the march are speaking up to promote change.
Even as I teach my daughter to believe in herself and draw strength from her Hualapai, Navajo, Hopi, and Chinese heritage, I recognize the struggles we as women still face and those our mothers, grandmothers and generations before them faced in their lives.
Today Zoey has a choice to become whatever she wants to be. Even I have been able to reinvent myself from a computer scientist to a woman business owner. These choices were not available to my mother and grandmother. They had to work in the few accepted fields for women, had less educational opportunities and married young since that was the societal expectation.
As much as I hope that with all the struggles our ancestors faced, and women today, that society is moving closer to equality, that we could live in a world where we are treated as people, I recognize the obstacles still ahead of us. I’m reminded of my aunt Eileen, who comforted me during a moment of fear. She assured me of the strength I had within, that I came from a long line of warrior women. “It’s in your blood, in your veins,” she would tell me.
I give my daughter this same assurance which is why I wanted her to be among the Indigenous women gathered for the march. I wanted her to see the warrior women who are not only speaking up for gender and racial equality, but injustice, voicing the hard truths about missing and murdered indigenous women. #mmiw
I was proud to hear the women at the march share their stories, in their own voices, reinforcing to me the reason I am focusing my business on communications services to tribal communities. We, as indigenous people, need to be heard.
A few days ago I saw Zoey looking at herself in a mirror, telling herself that she is pretty, she’s strong and she can run fast. She possesses a confidence I never had at her age. It’s a constant struggle for many women. It is my fervent hope that my daughter will continue to feel this empowered, strong and beautiful every day.