Feminists Around the World: Sara Omi

Today we're talking about Indigenous lawyer and environmental advocate Sara Omi.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha and welcome to stuff
I've never told you production of Bahart Radio and welcome
to another feminist around the world. And today we wanted
to feature an indigenous activist as yesterday, not that you

(00:26):
guys are listening when it's being published, but what's actually
Indigenous People Day here in the US, So like October fourteenth,
you know, around that time is what used to be
Columbus Day. But we don't want to necessarily celebrate a
colonizer who stole people's identities and property. So of course
we're going to talk about Indigenous People's Day. And so

(00:49):
with that coming and going, we were talking about activists
and lawyer set Ami. So Ami is an EMBEDDA lawyer
who has been working to advocate for her community and
the environment. And though her work alone is something that
we should be celebrating, she has made history becoming the
first Indigenous woman lawyer in Panama, which I thought was

(01:10):
really really significant. In went an article Annie, they featured
like how many people within their community go on to
law school or graduate from law school, and it's like
a three to one so three men to one woman
in general. So according to a lot of the stats
is obviously overbeandonly men who are in this field and
getting an education alone. So she decided at a young

(01:33):
age around fifteen, that she was going to go down
this path, that she needed to do something for her
community and that one of the things that she knows
that has some power is education and then also knowing
policies and law. So she went down this route, which
was amazing. So AMI's journey has been heavily influenced by
her family and her community and her calling to fight

(01:53):
for them and for herself. So Eco Americas was able
to sit down and talk with her about herself and
her works in twenty twenty three. So here's what she
told them about why she wanted to go into law
and her work. She said, I was born in a
moment of conflict. My community had been relocated and was
seeking ways to survive. Everything was in short supply and

(02:13):
there were no opportunities. Women and young people had no voice.
My mother was the first female in better achief, and
throughout my childhood I watched her fight for the rights
of a relocated community. From when I was very young,
I wanted to go to school so I could become
a lawyer and support my mother in her pursuit of justice.
I was lucky my parents understood education was the way

(02:34):
to change things, even though at the time it was
not normal for em bettered girls to be sent to
primary school. I left my village at the age of
fifteen so I could continue my studies, and thanks to
scholarships from this Catholic church, I graduated as a lawyer
at the age of twenty two. Even when I was
far away from my community, I never lost my connection
with my village, and I always dreamed of returning to

(02:56):
help my people in their search for better economic, social,
and political opportunity, to fight against the invasion of our
territory by non indigenous communities, and to defend women in
indigenous communities from violence and discrimination. So her family has
always made sure she knew and understood the legacy of
her people, including the uprooting of her people. Here's some

(03:17):
information about that from elpass dot com. They write from
family stories. Ami learned earlier on about the uprooting that
her people had to endure. It happened between nineteen seventy
two and nineteen seventy six, when the construction of the
Vola LEAs Hydroelectric dam on the Bayana River flooded the
land they inhabited and forced them to rebuild their lives elsewhere.

(03:38):
This opened a community wound and motivated an international claim
recognized in twenty fourteen by ruling by the Inter American
Court of Human Rights. So a lot of history, a
lot of hurt, especially when it comes to the uprooting
of an entire indigenous community. Yeah, so we know that
there's a lot more to that history than we're getting into,
but just to pinpoint that, and so when she returned

(04:01):
back to her community, she was able to assess the
level of needs not only for her community, but for
many other Indigenous communities around them. She told the Latin
America and Caribbean Sector for the UN Women's Organization quote,
when I arrived in Panama City, I thought that the
problems only existed in my community, but I realized that
all Indigenous peoples faced the same needs. And that is

(04:22):
where I became concerned as a young person and decided
to become part of the organization of Embedda Munan Youth
of Panama or OJEWP. That is where I learned about
the rights of Indigenous peoples and I support the political
agenda to ensure the fundamental rights of our people, and
she went on talking specifically about the lack of women
when it comes to being a part of the solutions

(04:43):
for the issues, saying, knowing all the difficulties of our
people and the lack of participation of women in decision
making at the level of our traditional structures, I accepted
the challenge of participating and being a traditional authority in
the position of President of the General and Better Congress
of Altabaio. Then, in search of occupying a more visible
space in my territory a year ago, I dared to

(05:06):
challenge the traditional structure to be the only female candidate
to aspire to the position of General Chief of said Congress,
because we are the women who desire better opportunities on
a personal, family and community level with the help of
breaking the barriers of violence against girls, boys and women
in the community and trying to seek better living conditions
without straying from our Embarrah worldview. So she's been really

(05:30):
vocal about the importance of Indigenous women being a part
of this conversation when it comes to Indigenous rights and
also for the fight against climate change, and we've seen
that over and over and over again when we talk
about indigenous peoples and activists. So here's a quote from
the Ecoamericas dot com interview. Indigenous women are the guardians
of traditional knowledge about planting, food, protection of the forest, water, biodiversity,

(05:54):
and other ancestral spiritual practices. It has always been women's
role to transmit that note to current and future generations.
Yet that all important responsibility has always been made invisible.
We were just seen as women at home. Women and
our communities have so many tools, but in the past
we had no way to put that ancestral knowledge on
the table and use our skills to accompany our community's

(06:17):
process of development. From the fight for territory, the fight
for development with dignity, the protection of traditional values, our
cosmo vision, all of these can now be positioned at
territorial and national level. We have worked to bring our
role to light and position the voice of women in
indigenous communities so that we can exert our influence. Climate
change is very present in our communities and women are

(06:38):
on the front light of its effects and during crop
failure and extreme weather conditions, for example, we work hard
to restore the forest, leading the process and applying our
ancestral knowledge. Again, I think that's been a common theme
when we talk about indigenous peoples, when we talk about
the community and activists itself, that the women are the
front line. And we know this as a tradition in general,

(06:59):
but as they are even biblically, which we kind of
talked about, held responsible for teaching traditions and passing those
down in those stories. So I think it's one of
those conversations where we talk about the importance of remembering
cultures and traditions, and especially if it's an honoring a

(07:19):
good system, I think we should that key word being good.
So and with that, it's not surprising that she would
become a part of the leaderships for different programs and

(07:41):
organizations to continue with the much needed conversation. She's the
founder of the Embeter Artisan Women Association or a Marie
em Betterra, which works to promote the culture and empower
the Embtter women by passing on the traditions and preserving
their cultural knowledge. She was also the president, and I
believe she is now a spokesperson coordinator for the territorial

(08:01):
women leaders of the Mesoamerican Alliance of People in Forest
and a spokesperson for the Women of the Global Alliance
of Territorial Communities and as a representative, she has used
her platform to continue the conversation of the importance of
women in the community. Like we said before, she told
olpast dot com, women maintain the balance that the family needs.
They protect the family and the community. It is women

(08:23):
who are active, better organized, concerned every day with maintaining identity,
in my case, influencing the creation of public policies that
integrate the vision of Indigenous women and that achieve concrete
results in the territory. And she told climateforest dot org
about what her organizations are doing in regards to climate change.
She said, the women in my organizations, both locally and

(08:45):
across Panama, are proposing various alternatives to combat the effects
of climate change and to recover and preserve our traditional knowledge,
for instance by creating botanical gardens made by women to
promote this knowledge. We are working hard on sustainable economic
through our identity. Where do we want to go? We
are proposing our initiatives and our alternatives to be able

(09:06):
to continue working with the balance that our mother earth needs.
We are also working on how families can subsist despite
the current and future challenges to food security. We are
working with the concept of the living forest, with the
traditional medicine, food security, agricultural production, which are important tools
to maintain the balance and protection of our mother earth.
And when she was asked about some of her biggest challenges,

(09:28):
she told them the biggest challenges that we have, especially
as women, is our access to full and effective participation
in all spaces. We currently lack strategic allies that can
help us to promote our positions. We also need compensation
for the yearly losses that our communities suffer because of
climate change. It impacts us severely and disrupts life in

(09:49):
our territories. We need to fight these challenges on the
grounds of our own vision, especially the vision we have
as women. But again with the challenges, she also has hope.
The Eco America's interview, she says, I'm optimistic that there
will be a positive change. Those changes depend on us
being committed to repairing and restoring our mother Earth. With

(10:09):
our influence, power and voices, we will be able to
ensure that there are more women leaders who can unify
our message in a single voice, so that in the
near future, rights can be perspected and there can be
full and effective participation of Indigenous people and women in
the dialogue. I aspire to see more women leading the
process of social and environmental justice. And from the LAC

(10:32):
dot unwomen dot Org they asked her what her message
was for the younger Indigenous women and generations, and she said,
my message to the youth is that they have the
responsibility to keep the essence of our Indigenous peoples alive.
They need to be present in our struggles and value
this knowledge as an essential tool representing the voices of

(10:52):
women and our grandparents, and that without their participation, the
development to which we aspire as Indigenous people women in
youth will not be possible. Yeah Ay missed out on
our previous feature with Gualinga that she is a younger generation,
her and her sister of Indigenous people who have been
putting in this fight and making sure that their culture

(11:14):
and their community are preserved and that they are fighting
for not only their land, but again for their people.
So we've seen this example and we know if anybody
rallies and answered these calls, it is the Indigenous peoples,
and it is a lot of the Indigenous Indigenous young peoples.
So it's amazing to see. But for a MEI she

(11:35):
her work continues to be acknowledged, and not just with
her leadership, but also being nominated for her work, including
being named one hundred most Powerful Women by Forbes Central
America for two years in a row. I don't know
if the twenty twenty four list has come out, but
last like twenty twenty three, she was on that list.
So we'll see she's back on that list because I'm
sure she definitely deserves it with all of her amazing works.

(11:57):
And yeah, we'll come back. I'm sure we're going to
do a found up soon about where are they now
conversations if we can find them. Yeah, I like that idea. Okay,
we did that before. We were like, yeah, well, we'll
see look forward to that listeners. In the meantime, if

(12:20):
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(12:42):
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