When Indigenous Belief Systems Become Feminist Theory: Rethinking Global Frameworks

Introduction

Western feminist theory has long claimed universality. Simone de Beauvoir’s insistence that “one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman” or Judith Butler’s performativity have traveled widely across classrooms and NGOs. Yet the more these theories circulate, the more they reveal their limits: concepts birthed in Paris, New York, or Berlin rarely map neatly onto the lives of women in Hanoi, Johannesburg, or the Andes. What happens when feminist theory begins, not in Western universities, but in sacred temples, ancestral rituals, and local cosmologies? What happens when feminism listens to spirits as much as to social scientists?

This essay argues that indigenous belief systems are not premodern relics, but living feminist philosophies. Drawing on Vietnam’s Đạo Mẫu (Mother Goddess worship), South Africa’s Ubuntu, and Latin America’s Pachamama, I propose that global feminism must shift from “adding” marginalized voices into an already-fixed canon to recognizing these voices as epistemological centers. Feminism, in this view, is not a universal doctrine but a plural chorus.

Đạo Mẫu: Power in Possession

Vietnamese Đạo Mẫu (Mother Goddess worship) is often treated by outsiders as colorful folklore — extravagant costumes, trance rituals, music echoing in temples. Yet for Vietnamese women, Đạo Mẫu has long offered something beyond spectacle: a space of power, recognition, and dignity.

In lên đồng rituals, women embody deities, moving between divine and human realms. Here, womanhood is not defined by subordination but by agency through sacred performance. The Mother Goddesses — Liễu Hạnh, Thượng Ngàn, Mẫu Thoải — are not passive icons but commanding figures, celebrated for their authority and protection. Feminist theory born from Đạo Mẫu suggests that empowerment can emerge not from rejecting spirituality as “irrational,” but from reclaiming it as a stage for female sovereignty.

This complicates the secular bias of much Western feminism. Where European secularization often equated religion with patriarchy, Đạo Mẫu shows a different path: the sacred can be a feminist arena.

Ubuntu: I Am Because We Are

In South Africa, the philosophy of Ubuntu — “I am because we are” — shifts feminism from individual liberation to collective survival. Ubuntu resists the neoliberal turn that frames empowerment as individual choice or market participation. Instead, it emphasizes that dignity arises from relationship, reciprocity, and care.

Applied to feminist struggles, Ubuntu means that one woman’s liberation is incomplete without her community’s. A garment worker’s demand for wages is tied to her children’s schooling, her neighbor’s health, her village’s survival. Feminist solidarity here is not abstract but embodied in networks of daily interdependence.

Ubuntu reorients feminism away from the atomized subject and toward the communal self. In doing so, it offers a counterpoint to individualistic strains of feminism that dominate Euro-American discourse.

Pachamama: Feminism as Ecological Ethics

In the Andes, Pachamama — the earth as Mother — is not metaphor but cosmology. Indigenous women activists in Bolivia and Peru mobilize Pachamama to link gender justice with environmental defense. For them, to exploit women and to exploit the earth are parallel violences; to defend women and to defend the earth are parallel struggles.

This ecological feminism does not emerge from academic eco-theory but from ancestral practices of honoring land and seasons. It challenges Western feminist frameworks that treat “nature” as backdrop, instead insisting that human and nonhuman well-being are inseparable.

By centering Pachamama, Latin American feminists remind us that global feminism cannot be anthropocentric. The body, the soil, the river — all are sites of feminist politics.

From Margins to Centers

What unites Đạo Mẫu, Ubuntu, and Pachamama is not sameness but epistemic insurgency: each insists that feminism must begin from local truths rather than imported categories. Too often, “global feminism” has meant translating Western concepts into other tongues, as though Vietnamese, Zulu, or Quechua worlds needed only to be “included.” But inclusion still assumes a center.

A truly global feminism does not add on; it re-centers. It treats a Vietnamese temple, a South African proverb, and a Bolivian ritual not as colorful supplements, but as theoretical engines.

The Risks of Romanticization

Of course, valorizing indigenous systems carries risks. Rituals can be patriarchal as well as liberating. Community obligations can suppress individuality. Appeals to tradition can justify exclusion. To embrace indigenous epistemologies as feminist does not mean ignoring their contradictions.

The task, rather, is to approach them critically yet respectfully — to ask how they can generate alternative feminist futures without idealizing them as pure. Feminism must remain alert to power imbalances within indigenous traditions even as it draws strength from them.

Implications for Global Feminism

What does this mean for the future of feminist theory? First, it requires humility: Euro-American frameworks are not universal templates but one set among many. Second, it demands translation in the deepest sense — not only linguistic, but conceptual. To translate Ubuntu into feminist discourse, for instance, is to reshape what “autonomy” means. To translate Pachamama is to rewrite the boundaries of the political.

Finally, it calls for methodological creativity. Comparative qualitative studies — like those our collective undertakes — can uncover resonances and dissonances across traditions, helping us imagine new feminist vocabularies born from the South as much as the North.

Conclusion

Indigenous belief systems are not the past; they are the present. They are not curiosities to be documented; they are philosophies to be learned from. In Đạo Mẫu’s goddess rituals, in Ubuntu’s communal ethos, in Pachamama’s ecological wisdom, we glimpse feminist futures that do not mimic Paris or New York, but emerge from Hanoi, Johannesburg, and Cusco.

To take them seriously is to recognize that global feminism is not a single story. It is, and must remain, a chorus. And perhaps the most feminist act today is not to speak louder, but to listen differently.