The 13th Annual International Women’s Day Celebration
March 15, 2008
Plenary Panel – 12:30 – 1:45 p.m. (Great Hall)
Women and Indigenous Communities: The Struggle for Human Rights
Panelists: State Senator Mee Moua, Teresa Ortiz, Laura Waterman Wittstock
Moderator: Barbara Frey, Director, Human Rights Program,
University of Minnesota
The afternoon portion of this year's celebration will include a panel on indigenous rights and women's rights. This topic is particularly timely in light of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly this past September after 30 years of negotiations and drafting. The Declaration establishes a universal framework for the survival, dignity, well-being and rights of the world's indigenous people and promotes their full and effective participation in all matters that concern them. This panel will feature indigenous women's issues during this important moment of recognition for group rights. State Senator Mee Moua will speak on issues facing Hmong indigenous women, Teresa Ortiz will reflect on her work with Mayan women in Chiapas as well as her work with the worker's rights programs in the U.S., and Laura Waterman Wittstock will speak about her career as a long-time activist for indigenous rights.
State Senator Mee Moua was first elected to the Minnesota Senate in a special election in January 2002. She is the nation’s first Hmong American elected to a state legislature. Senator Moua serves as the Chair of the Judiciary Committee and is a member of the Public Safety Budget Division, Taxes Committee and Transportation Budget and Policy Division. In addition to being a member of the Senate, Senator Moua is an attorney. She has degrees from Brown University, a Masters of Public Policy from the University of Texas-Austin, and her law degree from the University of Minnesota. She is a member of the Democratic National Committee and a board member on the Asian and Pacific Islander American Health Forum. Born in Laos, Senator Moua immigrated to the U.S. in 1978 and currently lives in St. Paul with her husband Yee Chang and their three children, Chase, Sheng and Amelia.
Teresa Ortiz worked for many years at the Resource Center of the Americas, promoting justice for immigrant workers and their families, and is now part of the Worker’s Interfaith Network, assisting immigrants and workers with human and workers’ rights. She was born in Mexico and came to the U.S. in the 1970s. After undergraduate and graduate studies in education, she taught Spanish at several Twin Cities area schools.
In 1995, Ortiz moved to Chiapas, Mexico with her family, where she founded the Cloudforest Initiative to work with coffee growers’ cooperatives to sell Fair Trade coffee. She also began documenting the experience of women in Chiapas, eventually publishing their stories in Never Again a World Without Us: Voices of Mayan Women in Chiapas (2001). The book reflects the experiences of indigenous women involved in or affected by the Zapatista movement.
In 2007, Teresa Ortiz was honored with the Peacemaker of the Year Award from the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), a national organization that supports peacemaking.
Laura Waterman Wittstock is president and CEO of Wittstock & Associates, a media and education consulting firm. She serves on the boards of the Greater Metropolitan Housing Corporation (GMHC), SEARCH, Change, Inc., Baby's Space, and the Metro Area Agency on Aging. A former journalist, Waterman Wittstock is the author of several publications, including Diverse Populations/Diverse Needs: Community Foundations and Diversity and Changing Communities, and ININATIG’S Gift of Sugar: Traditional Native Sugar Making. She is a former elected member and president of the Minneapolis Library Board, where she worked on the development and realization of the new Central Library. She also served as the fourth Louis W. Hill, Jr. Fellow in Philanthropy under the University of Minnesota’s Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs. Wittstock is the recipient of several leadership and professional awards, including the 2006 Distinguished IEL Service Award, (Institute for Educational Leadership national award for improvement of American education), the American Indian Honored Educator of 2005, the Human Rights Award from the Minnesota Lawyers International Human Rights Committee, and the National Headliner Award for Outstanding Documentary by a Network, for Coming from America: Executive Producer.
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