In the framework of the World March of Women in the Year 2000, the Indigenous Women of the Americas want it to be known that we are ratifying our commitment to participate so that our specific issues, demands, and proposals for solutions will be heard. We ratify our commitment to build unity and move forward in the struggle against violence and poverty, both of which offend our identity and dignity by degrading our cultural and territorial values. The struggle in which we women are currently engaged is aimed at providing a future for coming generations, a lasting guarantee for our cultures, which have existed for millenniums, and just recognition for pluricultural societies so that social equilibrium may thrive throughout the world.
Indigenous peoples are rich in resources and wisdom, but they have been dispossessed.
Their right to control over their own development must therefore be respected. We demand full recognition of our right to free self-determination and to autonomy regarding our territorial, social, economic, and political rights. We condemn the three-pronged discrimination that we suffer as Indigenous women living in poverty. Discrimination is a form of violence. Indigenous women must confront discrimination every day where they work and in their home lives.