Kelly Olivo, the portrait of a young Indigenous woman leader
For Kelly Olivo, an ayahuasca ceremony was the first step on her path to leadership as a young Indigenous woman. It was in 2020, during this ritual, that she had a vision in which she was surrounded by other young people. According to Kelly, those images revealed a future that later became reality: the day she was elected president of the Organization of Indigenous Youth and Students of Madre de Dios (OJEIMAD).
Kelly, a member of the San Jacinto native community (Tambopata) and part of the Shipibo-Konibo people, has been working to defend the rights of Indigenous girls, adolescents, youth, and women. She knows the road is difficult, but that hasn’t stopped her from pursuing her goal of increasing women’s participation in all areas of society.
While Kelly emphasizes the importance of working with new generations to build equality and empower women, she also prioritizes urgent issues affecting Indigenous peoples, such as malnutrition, limited access to healthcare, the advance of illegal activities on their lands, precarious education, and the lack of awareness among many women about their rights. On the latter two points, Kelly proposes democratizing technology to expand access to information.
As president of OJEIMAD, Kelly has traveled to several communities in the Madre de Dios region, where she has witnessed firsthand the deep needs of her people. To share more about her story and activism, she created a short documentary titled “Woman in the Indigenous World,” which includes testimonies from her grandparents, Pedro Vargas and Clotilde Pio, who recount the suffering endured by the Shipibo-Konibo during the rubber boom era.
Kelly’s work is part of the Indigenous Communicators Program of the Peruvian Society for Environmental Law (SPDA). Through this initiative, the story of this young Indigenous leader is being shared—one who seeks to inspire more women to take on leadership roles in defending the Peruvian Amazon, despite the challenges they face within their own communities.
