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Indigenous feminism is an intersectional theory and practice of feminism that focuses on decolonization, indigenous sovereignty, and human rights for Indigenous women and their families. The focus is to empower Indigenous women in the context of Indigenous cultural values and priorities, rather than mainstream, white, patriarchal ones. In this cultural perspective, it can be compared to womanism in the African-American communities.
Indigenous communities are diverse. While some women continue to hold considerable power within their tribal nations, many others have lost their traditional roles within their communities, while others live outside of traditional communities altogether. Women who hold power at home have differing goals from those who are still struggling for basic human rights.
Modern Indigenous feminism has developed as a community and analyses are needed to prioritize the issues faced by Indigenous women. Surviving generations of ongoing genocide, colonisation, and racism have resulted in differing priorities for Indigenous women. Mainstream feminists have often been unwilling to prioritize issues which are urgent crises in Indigenous communities. For example, the missing and murdered Indigenous women epidemic, forced sterilization of Indigenous women, the struggle for land rights, and the disproportionate sexual victimization of Native American women , specifically targeted by white men.
Indigenous feminism is related to postcolonial feminism as it acknowledges the devastating consequences of colonisation on Indigenous peoples and the lands they inhabit, and the importance of decolonisation in dismantling oppressive systems that were introduced as a result of colonisation. The central role of the ancestral landbase, and current land rights and environmental struggles, connect Indigenous feminism to some aspects of ecofeminism. Differentiating indigenous feminism from mainstream white feminism and its related forms of feminism is important because "indigenous women will have different concrete experiences that shape our relation to core themes" than those of non-indigenous women.