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Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and Samantha and welcome to Steph.

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Speaker 1: I've never told your production of I High Radio. Yes,

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Speaker 1: and welcome to another women around the world and the

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Speaker 1: amazing things they are doing and continue to do to

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Speaker 1: fight for women's rights and advocacy. Yes, and we celebrate

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Speaker 1: with all of them. Yes. Typically out on Tuesdays and

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Speaker 1: whenever you listen. So today we are jumping to Nepal

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Speaker 1: to talk about an advocate for disabled Indigenous people, Pratima Gurung.

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Speaker 1: And Gurung is an academic activist from Nepal and has

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Speaker 1: been working tirelessly to fight for the rights of the

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Speaker 1: disabled women and children in the indigenous community of Nepal.

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Speaker 1: A disabled Indigenous woman herself after losing her hand at

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Speaker 1: the age of seven, Gurung has been a part of

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Speaker 1: the fight to get the voices of her community heard

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Speaker 1: when it comes to being seen presented throughout the world

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Speaker 1: and Paul alone. The population is made up with at

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Speaker 1: least thirty five of indigenous peoples and according to Guru

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Speaker 1: DePaul has at least one point three million Indigenous people

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Speaker 1: with disabilities right and Gurum has talked about the difficulties

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Speaker 1: and challenges and being an Indigenous woman with disabilities, and

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Speaker 1: she stays quote, the first challenge I experience as an

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Speaker 1: Indigenous woman with disabilities is about meaningful representation. It involves

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Speaker 1: who you are, where you are represented. And because as

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Speaker 1: soon as you are a woman and an Indigenous woman

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Speaker 1: and a woman with disabilities, all of these identities keep

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Speaker 1: you limited within the four walls. It comes to a

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Speaker 1: point that your voice, your representation, your identification, and your

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Speaker 1: recognition is the primary thing, and that begins from home,

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Speaker 1: from the family, from the private sphere to the public sphere.

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Speaker 1: And she continued the second challenges about being disabled and

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Speaker 1: the stigma associated with it. When you are a woman

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Speaker 1: with disabilities, you have many serious and critical issues related

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Speaker 1: with your life. The third thing is ensuring your base

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Speaker 1: sick fundamental needs like education, your social background, your economic status,

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Speaker 1: your employment opportunities, your accessibility. Group started working with the

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Speaker 1: Indigenous People's Movement over twenty years ago in two thousand one,

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Speaker 1: researching the different aspects and fundamental rights for Indigenous women,

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Speaker 1: and quickly realized how little information she had about Indigenous

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Speaker 1: people with disability and especially Indigenous women with disabilities, and

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Speaker 1: saw the importance of the intersectionality of Indigenous and disability um.

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Speaker 1: She's become a fierce advocate in ensuring these voices are

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Speaker 1: heard and has become a leader within the movement. She's

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Speaker 1: currently the President of the National Indigenous Disabled Women's Association

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Speaker 1: NEPAUL and she is an expert contributor for the Disability

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Speaker 1: National Direcitions Committee, which was created by the Ministry of

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Speaker 1: Women and Children and Senior Citizen in Nepaul government and

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Speaker 1: the General Secretary for Indigenous Persons with Disability Global Network

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Speaker 1: and Nepal Indigenous Disabled Association. And on top of that,

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Speaker 1: she is a part of the faculty of pad mc

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Speaker 1: kanye College. Cat Men do. As you can tell, she

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Speaker 1: is very busy person and has a lot to do

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Speaker 1: and does it very well. With her busy life, she

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Speaker 1: continues to speak out and work internationally to have women

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Speaker 1: to be a part of the policy changes in overall

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Speaker 1: conversation of the importance and representation as a whole, especially

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Speaker 1: when it comes to making a progress and change in

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Speaker 1: our world and community. As she says in her interview

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Speaker 1: with Cultural Survival Quarterly, I really want to highlight the

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Speaker 1: effective and meaningful participation of Indigenous women at all levels. Today.

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Speaker 1: We want Indigenous women at the table. We want them

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Speaker 1: to make their decisions. We want them to make their

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Speaker 1: concrete ideas known about the issues and concerns that are

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Speaker 1: affecting their lives. We don't want others who would make

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Speaker 1: a decision and an agreement on behalf of us. Indigenous

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Speaker 1: women with disabilities have to be brought to the front

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Speaker 1: lines by their effective and meaningful participation. Yeah, and actually

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Speaker 1: she just recently, I think it was twenty nineteen, participated

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Speaker 1: with the u n's Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in

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Speaker 1: New York and was able to highlight a lot lot

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Speaker 1: of just controversial things about the mere fact that there's

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Speaker 1: not any representation, there's no real conversation within the Indigenous community,

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Speaker 1: and we wanted to highlight an Indigenous woman. We try

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Speaker 1: to do as many as we can from all over

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Speaker 1: the world because this is constantly a thing that we

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Speaker 1: see where they're completely overlooked and invisible. And then putting

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Speaker 1: on top of that, we talked about the women who

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Speaker 1: are ignored, and we've talked about the missing and murdered

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Speaker 1: Indigenous women that continue to be overlooked, but we also

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Speaker 1: need to talk about those that are affected by disability.

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Speaker 1: And we know that people with disabilities in general are overlooked.

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Speaker 1: So this intersectionality of just being completely not thought of,

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Speaker 1: is this higher level of concern that we should have

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Speaker 1: as a conversation, and it should go beyond just the

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Speaker 1: political conversation, because we see that every day. It's not

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Speaker 1: a topic that we often see, and that's really sad

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Speaker 1: and such that oftentimes they're left out altogether in conversations

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Speaker 1: in general. And I think that it's amazing how little

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Speaker 1: we know of that population, or how little that we

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Speaker 1: talked about that population, and her talking about in two

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Speaker 1: thousand one doing her own research not being able to

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Speaker 1: find it. In two thousand twenty one, I don't even

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Speaker 1: see her name in Wikipedia. And she's doing some dynamic things,

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Speaker 1: obviously trying to change people's minds. She's doing it in

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Speaker 1: her country, she's doing it for her people as well

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Speaker 1: as coming into the US trying to talk to the

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Speaker 1: United Nations. But again we see very limited information. And

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Speaker 1: this was twenty nineteen. And then on top of that,

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Speaker 1: we've talked about how COVID has impacted the indigenous community,

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Speaker 1: and we still aren't talking enough about it. We're not

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Speaker 1: talking enough about how lack of funding is happening, and

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Speaker 1: the fact that she was here in twenty nineteen here

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Speaker 1: in the US talking about it, and she's still fighting

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Speaker 1: for these rights. But at the same time, we know

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Speaker 1: COVID has hit indigenous communities, some of them the hardest,

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Speaker 1: and there's very little and so much backtracking in the

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Speaker 1: progress they've already made because of quarantine in the pandemic

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Speaker 1: in itself, and I think we have to make better

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Speaker 1: efforts and hopefully we are any hopefully we are doing

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Speaker 1: so in trying to recognize this hard work that's already

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Speaker 1: being done. Literally, we don't have to do much other

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Speaker 1: than read these interviews. And by the way, if we

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Speaker 1: just talked about the Cultural Survival quarterly. They are a

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Speaker 1: great organization that talks about indigenous people around the world.

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Speaker 1: So if you want more information about what they're doing,

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Speaker 1: it's Cultural Survival dot org. And I've gotten a few

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Speaker 1: names from their organization from their site. So thank you

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Speaker 1: all for your hard work and helping us to recognize

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Speaker 1: these incredible people who are doing some incredible work. And

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Speaker 1: I hope we can do better because uh, and we're

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Speaker 1: not going to talk about it right now, but just

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Speaker 1: what comes to mind is the recent case of the

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Speaker 1: influencer white woman who wit missing and has been found murdered.

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Speaker 1: There's so much to try to push her case up

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Speaker 1: so people can see it. And a lot of the

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Speaker 1: people in the community, people of color, miss indigenous people

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Speaker 1: are like, what about the people we've been hollering about?

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Speaker 1: Who we've been yelling about? Hasn't anyone showed this much

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Speaker 1: interest in these cases? And I think it's important to remember, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: there are so many things happening that we continue to

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Speaker 1: ignore because they are a person of color and or

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Speaker 1: indigenous or black individual is absurd black that we hear

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Speaker 1: of these cases and we need to do better as

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Speaker 1: a whole, as a community and as a group of

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Speaker 1: people that we say our advocates and we want to

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Speaker 1: be allies in trying to push this narrative in this

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Speaker 1: conversation forward, Yes, yes, yes to all. Yeah, there's a

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Speaker 1: lot to impact there, and we would love to highlight

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Speaker 1: women who are doing this work. It's something that we

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Speaker 1: really enjoy. And if there's somebody listeners that you think, oh,

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Speaker 1: this person, this is somebody who needs to be shouted out,

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Speaker 1: please let us know right in our email is Stephania

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Speaker 1: mom stuff at I arnt media dot com. You can

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Speaker 1: find us on Twitter at mom Stuff Podcasts or on

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Speaker 1: Instagram at Stuff I've Never Told You. Thanks as always

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Speaker 1: to our superproducer Christina, Thank you, and thanks to you

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Speaker 1: for listening Stuff One Ever Told the direction of I

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Speaker 1: Heeart Radio. For more podcast on my Heart Radio is

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