Paper short abstract:

How do internal and colonial patriarchal systems intertwine in the lives of Yukuna-Matapí and Tanimuka-Letuama women? What tensions emerge in authority, shamanism, mobility, and paths to emancipation?

Paper long abstract:

My aim is to contribute to theorising patriarchy in Amazonian societies by analysing the intersection between internal or ancestral patriarchal orders and those derived from colonial structures. I focus on the embodied experiences and spatial trajectories of Yukuna-Matapí and Tanimuka-Letuama women from Colombia's eastern Amazon. Drawing on life narratives, I explore how these patriarchal expressions manifest somatically, revealing intricate entanglements of subjugation and emancipation.

I delve into internal patriarchal orders with a focus on father-daughter relationships as well as bonds with traditional healers or shamans. Marked by expectations, affections, and tensions, these relationships play a pivotal role in shaping women’s lives. I then examine how these forms of authority materialise in marriage and mobility, highlighting gendered divergences in patterns of belonging, territorial use, and spatial trajectories.

Inspired by indigenous community feminisms, I explore how women navigate these hierarchies thereby both perpetuating and transforming patriarchy. I seek to account for the ways that power operates across bodies, cosmologies, and colonial legacies.