PUBLIC COMMENTS ON CASES 2025-005-IG-UA, 2025-006-IG-UA, 2025-007-IG-MR, AND 2025-008-FB-MR ASSESSING IMPACT OF META’S NUDITY RULES ON INDIGENOUS PEOPLES
In this submission, we respond to the Oversight Board’s request for public comments on the impact of Meta’s nudity rules on Indigenous People, with specific reference to the following two issues.
Insights on the Himba, Yanomami and other Indigenous Peoples’ customs of nudity as part of their cultural expression.
For millennia, women in many indigenous communities, shielded from external influences, have preserved traditions of nudity as an integral part of their identity, a practice only disrupted by the imposition of colonial rule and its accompanying norms. Even today, many communities continue to uphold these traditions worldwide. For numerous indigenous communities worldwide, including the Himba People in Namibia and Yanomami People in Brazil and Venezuela, full or partial nudity is intrinsic and natural aspects of their cultural and personal identity, deeply intertwined with their aesthetic traditions, social norms, and environmental contexts. Specifically, in many cases, the public appearance of bare-breasted women—the central contention in these cases—embodies a natural, unembellished way of living, symbolizing identity, authenticity, and beauty. Often, attire, ornamentation, and bodily adornment, such as ochre paintings, tattoos, scarifications, and jewelries, serve as nonverbal expressions of individuality, social roles and statuses, artistry, and cultural heritage.
According to the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, there are more than 370 million Indigenous Peoples globally. Among these, various communities embrace full or partial nudity as a natural element of their cultural practices. Examples include, but are not limited to, the Mẽbêngôkre and Zo’é Peoples in Brazil, the Asmat and Korowai Peoples in Indonesia, the Zulu People in South Africa, the Khoisan People (combining the Khoekhoen and the Sān Peoples) in southern Africa, the Surma People (combining the Suri, Mursi and Me’en Peoples) in Ethiopia, Jarawa and Sentinelese Peoples in India, and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples in Australia. Each with distinct knowledge and beliefs systems, and traditions, these communities—some amongst the oldest living populations in the world—maintain social, cultural, economic, and political frameworks that collectively form a unique ontology of daily life, markedly different from those of the dominant societies surrounding them.
Understanding Indigenous Peoples’ customs of nudity as a form of social and cultural expression necessitates deconstruction of entrenched assumptions, reevaluation of dominant worldviews, and reorienting existing paradigms as contextually relative rather than universally absolute. As a starting point, it is important to recognize that nudity among indigenous communities, within its social and cultural context, transcends predominant worldview and modern constructs of immodesty, moral decay, voyeurism, provocation, objectification, sexuality, or taboo. It is also important to recognize that many of these indigenous communities have averted the colonial patriarchal structures, where women have traditionally been relegated to hierarchical, gendered roles and treated as secondary members of society; instead, these communities tend to be more egalitarian, with men and women sharing social and economic responsibilities in a more balanced, and often equal, manner. On the contrary, nudity, in many respect, represents a natural aspect of their existence and is a medium of cultural expression and storytelling. For instance, among the Yanomami People, partial nudity is emblematic of their harmonious coexistence with the rainforest and their cosmological beliefs, where the human body is seen as an integral part of the natural world.
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