Vol. 25 No. 2 (2026)

This special issue of The Fourth World Journal is devoted to women’s traditional medicine as a vital source of knowledge, practice, and resistance. Bringing together healers, activists, scholars, and artists from across global Indigenous and diasporic contexts, this issue’s focus challenges dominant frameworks of health by foregrounding cultural, relational, and place-based experiences of health and healing. We read academic analysis, narrative, and creative expression, presented by a wide range of voices, practices, and geographies, that illustrate how women sustain and adapt healing traditions. Each contributor identifies the diverse ways in which Indigenous epistemologies arise from a sense of place and belonging, often rooted in ancient traditions, and how this commonality shapes research and decision-making relevant today. From this perspective, traditional health and healing arise from culture and lived experience, while recognizing that the enduring effects of colonization shape traditional health care practices today.

Several authors explore the intersection of feminist and Indigenous methods. As we learn about local customary traditions, specific ecosystems, plants, and agents of healing, what emerges is a shared worldview rooted in reverence and reciprocity, tying people and their stories to the land and cosmos.