Teresa Zapeta is a Maya Indigenous leader from Guatemala and the Executive Director of the International Indigenous Women's Forum, a global network that has spent 25 years building Indigenous women's movements capable of holding democracies together when state institutions fail.
In 2023, her movement was central to the 106-day resistance that protected Guatemala's democratic transition. A successful, violence-free campaign with lessons for any movement committed to protecting such things.
In this conversation, recorded live at Women Deliver 2026 in Melbourne, Teresa sits down with Women's Agenda's Angela Priestley to talk about the funding gap that sees just 1.4% of global women's grant-making reach Indigenous women's organisations, why \"care as leadership\" is a counter-strategy to authoritarianism rather than just a value statement, and what global feminist media — including Women's Agenda — keeps getting wrong about Indigenous women's leadership.
Backlash Conversations is a Women's Agenda Podcast series, recorded live at Women Deliver 2026 in Melbourne. Check out more from the series in the feed.
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