Indigenous Bribri Women

My journey will begin in the Costa-Rican canton of Talamanca, home of the Indigenous Bribri. The Bribri operate matrilineally, meaning that solely mothers can transmit clan membership. In addition, land-ownership is reserved to women. The Bribri primarily inhabit rural and isolated communities in the mountains, which has enabled the preservation of ancestral practices and has kept them largely self-reliant.Though Bribri men sometimes travel away for formal employment, most communities solely rely on tourism revenue and subsistence agriculture. Thus, land carries both economic and symbolic value as the lifeline of a historically marginalized population, which raises a plethora of questions regarding the status of Bribri women.
Between August