Paper short abstract:

In this paper using ethnographic methods I argue that indigenous women of Attappady Hills South India are resisting settler colonialism through environment practice and creating new history of decoloniality.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper I argue that environment practice can become point of entry for indigenous women to resist coloniality of power. Few indigenous women living in the Attappady hills of South India, part of one of the important biodiversity sites of the world have developed pro-environment practices that help reinforce their indigenous culture, protect their biodiversity and critique the project of modernity ushered in by the British and continued by settler colonialism. Even as commercial monocrops and use of pesticides ushered in by settlers have become the rule, a section of women are using practices and language associated with sustainability to question power. For instance there are women who got into traditional healing harnessing ecological knowledge. Women of an entire village planted saplings on a barren hill and transformed it into a forest. Other women do organic cultivation and have even given up their livestock. Through their lived experience with the environment they understand that they are caught in a web of power and dominant knowledge. Using ethnographic methods this paper examines resistance in the environment practice of these tribal women as a decolonial project. The environment practice of these indigenous women is also an integrating ecological feminism that links women, culture and nature uniquely.