Gunadule Women Resisting: Culture and Identity in the Face of Internal Colonialism

Written on 29 August 2025. Posted in News

BY TAIRA STANLEY FOR INDIGENOUS DEBATES

Through identity-based cultural practices such as dance, language, spirituality, ancestral medicine and traditional dress, Gunadule women have forged a form of resistance against the internal colonialism imposed by the Panamanian state. These expressions are far from mere folkloric displays; they are tools of struggle for cultural sovereignty, collective memory, and for the preservation of their own worldview. The home, the Mornag, and ritual spaces have become both symbolic and political arenas of resistance.

The uprising known as the Tule Revolution took place in February 1925, – an act of collective defence against the Panamanian government’s attempt to impose a colonial structure on the Guna people. One hundred years on, the Gunadule people – and Indigenous Peoples across Panama – continue to resist a new form of internal colonialism exercised by a state that systematically assaults, threatens, and violates our collective rights. We are facing a denial of the principle of self-determination and a dismissal of international declarations that uphold our rights.

Within this context, historical portrayals of Indigenous women are often filtered through patriarchal, ethnocentric and racist lenses that erase their presence and reduce them to stereotypes. It is therefore vital to highlight the central role played by Guna women during the 1925 rebellion, when the government sought to dismantle the Guna cultural system by imposing a Western symbolic order. From a cultural and decolonial perspective, we can begin to understand the epistemic dimension of Guna women’s struggle and the legacy they continue to build today.

For Guna women, traditional dress, ceremonial songs, the role of knowledge bearer, and that of community educator, all represent symbolic territories of resistance in the fight for dignity and cultural sovereignty. These expressions are not mere objects of folklorisation but rather tools of symbolic resistance and historical reconstruction grounded in an Indigenous worldview.

Spaces of Symbolic Resistance among Guna Women

The participation of Gunadule women in the 1925 rebellion went far beyond a singular act of defiance – it became an enduring cultural affirmation grounded in everyday practice. Their resistance took shape across a range of symbolic spaces: the home, traditional medicine, healing, cooking, ceremonies and, most notably, in their identity as expressed through traditional dress. These became sites of identity reaffirmation in the face of a hegemonic system that, as early as 1922, sought to impose Western clothing – provoking strong resistance from Gunadule women.

In this context, Guna cultural practices – language, dance, spirituality, the mola, and ancestral medicine – took on an insurgent character. This was especially true given that Guna communities were among the first to suffer violent dispossession in places such as Yandub, Aggwanusadub, Niadub, Uggubseni, Gardi Sugdub, Diggir, Ailigandi and Uwargandub. Far from being folkloric expressions, these practices formed part of a complex symbolic system from which identity and resistance were articulated.

Traditional dress was the first symbolic element targeted for erasure: the Mola (the hand-sewn textile panel that adorns women’s clothing), bracelets, earrings, and the olasu (a gold nose ring). The mola, a living archive encoding ancestral narratives, became (and remains) a powerful emblem of cultural resistance: an aesthetic and political stronghold. After the rebellion, the Mola was reclaimed as a symbol of autonomy. Today, it represents not only beauty and tradition but memory, resilience, and pride. Despite efforts to suppress it, women safeguarded it, even concealing it within their clothing during the uprising.

The Symbolic Role of Orality and Education

Through stories, songs and teachings, women quietly ensured the survival of ancestral knowledge. This communal educational effort strengthened cultural identity and resisted the symbolic erasure imposed by colonisation. Despite guards forcing the Guna to dance to Western music, learn Spanish, and abandon their traditional dress, Guna women succeeded in transmitting the vital importance of preserving their culture through education.

The spiritual and ceremonial practices of the Gunadule people were not merely aspects of daily life but fundamental pillars in defending their identity against internal colonialism. As custodians of ancestral wisdom, keepers of oral memory, and active participants in traditional ceremonies, Gunadule women preserved the sacred rituals that sustain their relationships with spirits, nature and ancestors. From interpreting dreams to performing ceremonial songs, their involvement guaranteed the continuity of an Indigenous epistemology rooted in reciprocity, balance, and harmony with the environment.

Faced with imposed Western values such as rationalism, Christian morality, and a linear perception of time, Guna women resisted through the active practice of their spirituality. This inherited model, passed down from their elders, challenged hegemonic beliefs not with material weapons but with a coherent, living and meaningful symbolic framework. Consequently, rituals fulfilled not only religious functions but also political and educational roles, strengthening community bonds and reaffirming the right to exist according to their own worldview.

Community Organisation and Women’s Leadership

During the 1925 rebellion, Gunadule women played a pivotal role in community organisation, coordinating logistical, emotionals and strategic efforts that sustained the resistance on a daily basis. Their leadership unfolded across multiple levels: they established shelters and organised the relocation of families; ensured the safety of children, elders, and other vulnerable members of the community; and secured food, medicine, and essential supplies needed for survival amidst the conflict.

Yet their contribution went far beyond logistics. Women provided vital emotional support, offering collective care and transmitting calm, hope, and spiritual strength. Their presence was fundamental in holding the community together, maintaining morale, and preserving bonds of solidarity in the face of dispossession and state repression. This work of care and accompaniment – often rendered invisible by war-centred narratives that prioritise masculine roles – was a cornerstone of the resistance.

In this context, the Mornag – the Guna people’s normative and educational system – has long served as a key space for women’s active participation. It not only governs communal life but also functions as a bastion for the transmission of ancestral values and a site for negotiating women’s roles within a patriarchal order. During the 1925 uprising, the Mornag strengthened women’s organisational and spiritual capacities, enabling a resistance that was both coordinated and enduring.

The Home as a Symbolic Space of Cultural Resistance

Unlike Western perspectives that have historically viewed the home as a space of confinement and female subordination, in the Gunadule cultural universe the domestic sphere holds a profoundly different meaning. Following the 1925 uprising, the home was reimagined as a symbolic stronghold from which women enacted a powerful form of cultural, ethical and political resistance.

Far from serving as spaces of seclusion, homes became sanctuaries of collective care. Within these walls, Guna women not only ensured the nourishment, healing, and wellbeing of their families but also protected ancestral knowledge, spiritual practices, and oral traditions that form the foundation of Guna identity. The home was the space where ritual songs, the mother tongue, and the techniques for creating the Mola were preserved and transmitted down the generations.

Amid mounting pressure from the state to impose a Western model of life, the home became the nucleus of cultural sovereignty and a site of reaffirmed autonomy. In this context, women’s roles within the household defy any notion of passivity or subordination: their quiet, everyday, and spiritual labour was not only essential to sustaining the community during the uprising, but also to ensuring the survival and continuity of Guna cultural life over time.

Healing and Traditional Medicine as Strategies of Resistance

During the 1925 uprising, the ancestral medicine practised by women botanical healers emerged as a crucial instrument of holistic healing and a dynamic form of cultural resistance. In this context, the inaduled (botanical doctors) played a central role not only in tending to the physical well-being of combatants but also in restoring their spiritual and emotional equilibrium. Through sacred chants, ritual baths, medicinal plants, incense and ceremonial words, these women drew on knowledge passed down orally through generations – wisdom woven into a worldview in which the physical and the spiritual are inseparable.

Traditional medicine thus offered more than relief and strength; it stood as a form of epistemic resistance against the knowledge systems imposed by internal colonialism. By reaffirming their ancestral understandings of health, body, and spirit, the inaduled women redefined the very nature of the struggle, placing at its heart the defence of a collective, spiritual way of life deeply intertwined with the natural world.

In this context, healing became a resistance strategy as vital as any weapon, mending not only bodies damaged by violence but also the symbolic and cultural fabric of the community. In so doing, it fortified identity, cohesion and resilience against attempts at cultural annihilation. Traditional medicine was, therefore, also an act of ontological insubordination: a declaration of the right to exist through their own knowledge, languages, and beliefs.

Gunadule Women and the Epistemology of Resistance

The role of Gunadule women during the 1925 rebellion transcended the political and entered the epistemic realm, as they safeguarded ancestral knowledge through their distinct identity markers. Their actions wove a defence not only of their bodies and territories but also of a unique way of knowing, inhabiting the world, and passing down wisdom. Every song, ritual, and gesture of care and healing became a powerful act of resistance against the colonisation of thought and an affirmation of an ancestral worldview under threat from the hegemonic logic of the nation-state.

The legacy of these women does not rest solely in the memory of that historical moment. It endures in new generations who, through platforms such as general and local congresses, language revitalisation, territorial struggles, and spiritual practices, continuously reaffirm the cultural autonomy of the Gunadule people.

Gunadule women remain a central pillar in building and defending the fabric of their people’s identity. They weave together the symbolic and the political, the domestic and the spiritual, the ancestral and the contemporary. Their memory shines as a beacon for ongoing struggles for self-determination, justice, and the preservation of Indigenous cultures. Symbolically, the Guna woman embodies the backbone of the cultural system that internal colonialism sought to dismantle. Her body, her artistry, and her social role constitute a battleground in which the survival of Guna identity is fiercely contested. Today, as with many Indigenous women across Abya Yala, she continues to resist.

Taira Stanley is a specialist in Bilingual Intercultural Education and Project Coordinator at the Office of Indigenous Peoples, University of Panama. She is also the granddaughter of Nele Kantule and Manigueigdinapi, Coordinator of the Indigenous Peoples and Epistemic-Territorial Disputes Working Group at CLACSO, and a member of the Kuna Indigenous Women’s Association.

Cover photo: Gunadule women gather during the centenary commemoration of the 1925 revolution in the community of Usdub. Photo: Taira Edilma Stanley

Tags: Indigenous Debates