After giving birth to a girl, Omayra Casamá collected the placenta that had protected her daughter and buried it at the entrance to her home in the Ipeti Emberá community, in eastern Panama. Nature would thus ensure the well-being of the little girl, whom they named Sara 37 years ago. Sara Omi Casamá, Embera leader, recognizes in that ritual the origin of her unbreakable bond with the land that saw her grow up and that she learned to take care of with the commitment that she inherited from her mother and her grandmother. she. Also from her grandfather, a seasoned botanist who taught her to love the forest and understand the healing gifts that her plants hold.
From family stories, Omi learned early about the uprooting that his people had to endure. It happened between 1972 and 1976, when the construction of the Villalaz hydroelectric dam, on the Bayano River, flooded the land they lived in and forced them to rebuild their lives elsewhere. This opened a community wound and motivated an international claim, recognized in 2014 by a ruling of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. Moved by that dispossession and the continuous incursions of companies and individuals into her territory, Omi decided to study law in Panama City. She managed to become the first Embera woman lawyer. She returned to her town, she was in charge of the Emberá Congress of Alto Bayano and currently chairs the Coordinator of Territorial Women Leaders of Mesoamerica. For the magazine Forbes Central AmericaOmi is among the 100 most powerful women of 2023.
“If we indigenous people had individual territory and not collective territory, we would have already disappeared,” she tells América Futura in an interview in Montevideo, where she arrived invited by the Panamanian embassy at the beginning of November. In the Uruguayan capital, she spoke with representatives of the native peoples of that country and presented a sample of the crafts produced by the women of the Embera community of Panama. In that country, 12% of the 4.3 million inhabitants belong to native peoples. Omi advocates for its development without losing identity and in balance with nature, as thousands of Panamanians have requested in recent months in unprecedented demonstrations against the exploitation of the largest open-pit copper mine in Central America, a project that was finally approved by the Supreme Court. declared unconstitutional. “For us it represents our life, our very existence,” she says.
Ask. What impression have you had from the unprecedented protests against mining exploitation in Panama?
Answer. It is an issue that we, indigenous peoples, and especially women, have always been expressing: how to seek respect and balance with our mother earth, how to safeguard and care for the resources we have within our communities. Our mother earth is sick and the consequences are what we see now. We have just gone through a pandemic and more pandemics are going to come as a consequence of this process.
Q. What would help heal this sick land?
R. In the case of indigenous peoples, women are recovering food sovereignty as a good practice solution. Lately, our communities have been getting sick. For example, our women did not suffer from cancer, our men did not suffer from prostate diseases. What is this about? Because poor nutrition has also reached our territories. Through the Association of Emberá Artisan Women, we seek to vindicate the traditional knowledge of our grandparents, in terms of planting, with our own seeds and zero chemicals. We are also rescuing the knowledge of traditional medicine, creating our living pharmacies, restoring the forest. When the hydroelectric dam was built, the companies cut down all the native trees in the territory. We are restoring forests, but not with monocultures, but with native plants and trees.
Q. The relationship between traditional indigenous and Western medicine has been complex. How do they find their space in Emberá territory?
R. The knowledge of traditional medicine is what has allowed us to be alive, to be millennially resistant in this process. Perhaps there is a lack of recognition of that knowledge that is promoted as a good practice solution within our societies. But there is also great suspicion on our part because there have been cases in which knowledge has been stolen and there was no recognition of the people who protect and care for it.
Q. The promoters of the mining company in question mentioned in their defense that it will generate jobs and promote economic growth. What is your development idea?
R. We talk about development with identity and in balance with our mother earth. Of a sustainable economy, of good living, of enjoying what we have within the community. Our grandparents taught us why it is important to keep the forests intact, the protection of the rivers, which are the veins and part of the heart of our mother earth. They are part of those arms that we need to continue existing as indigenous peoples. For us it represents our own life, our own existence.
Q. How much does the fact of living in collective property territory and not individual ownership, as occurs mostly in the West, have a cultural impact?
R. Collective vision has been a very important strategy for the protection of territories. Because if we indigenous people had individual and not collective territory, we would have already disappeared. From an individual, Western perspective, this doesn't look very good, because they can't break it. If you go in to invade a piece of land, you are messing with an entire territory, not just one person.
Q. Mention development with identity and balance. What role do the women of your community play in this area?
R. Women maintain the balance that the family needs, they protect the family and the community. It is the women who are active, better organized, concerned every day with maintaining their identity. In my case, to influence to find public policies that integrate the vision of indigenous women and that there is a concrete result in the territory.
Q. You insist that they are not poor women, contrary to the widespread idea to the contrary.
R. They have always seen us as poor, vulnerable, marginalized women, but we are not. In the case of my people, we can have food every day. If I don't have money to buy a headache pill, the forest helps protect me. When it was my turn to be president of the Emberá Congress, [las autoridades gubernamentales] They said: “We are going to change the indigenous people to the program Ceilings of hope because they are poor.” They thought that with a little house with four walls they were going to develop the community, but they brought more needs. People thought: “we have to buy a mattress, a sofa, a television.” That's not living well. Our traditional houses are special and we are working to recover them. Given that, we say that we are not poor women, we are brave women.
Q. In 2021, you reported that the men of your community opposed you becoming chief and rigged the election result. How much does machismo weigh within your community?
R. It is a bad practice, assimilated in this case, within the territory. Our culture is rich, it is collective, it is supportive. It is duality between man and woman: we are on the same level. But that duality does not exist in practice. When we go to exercise our right as women, men, not all, see you as an enemy. There are also still barriers between women themselves. My grandmother questions my work, she does it half jokingly, but it's real. For example, it is rare for a woman my age not to have children. It is not well regarded in my community. I don't have them because I got into this leadership process and my priority was not to have them. I feel comfortable like this.
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