Today, August 9, 2024 is International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples!
The United Nations estimates that there are about 476 million Indigenous people living across 90 countries throughout the world.
Indigenous peoples are distinct social and cultural groups with ancestral ties to the lands and natural resources where they live, or where they have been displaced from. They are descendants of the peoples who inhabited the Americas, the Pacific, and parts of Asia and Africa before European colonization.
Indigenous peoples make up about six percent of the worlds population but speak the majority of the world’s languages. As the United Nations says:
“Indigenous Peoples are inheritors and practitioners of unique cultures and ways of relating to people and the environment. They have retained social, cultural, economic and political characteristics that are distinct from those of the dominant societies in which they live. Despite their cultural differences, Indigenous Peoples from around the world share common problems related to the protection of their rights as distinct peoples.”
Indigenous peoples are among the most disadvantaged and vulnerable peoples anywhere in the world yet Indigenous people have never surrendered their identities and their rights.
“Before they told us we didn’t exist;
now they know we do.”
Meybi Chamarra, Secretary of the Wounaan National Congress
Like Indigenous people across the world, the Wounaan and Ngäbe-Buglé of Panama have long sought recognition for their unique identities and way of life as well as their rights to their traditional lands and natural resources.
Native Future works to support the goals of Panama’s Indigenous people. Our work supports the Wounaan and Ngäbe-Buglé push to have their lands legally recognized and actively respected.
We work with traditional communities to receive education that meets their personal and Indigenous development goals. We work to build strong, self-sustaining Indigneous governance institutions and NGOs supporting Indigenous rights and develop needs of the Wounaan and Ngäbe-Buglé communities. Perhaps most importantly, we work with Wounaan communities to protect and manage their forests and natural resources in a sustainable, productive, and conservation-oriented manner, as they have done for generations.
Your support is vital to our efforts. Our work depends on small grants and individual donations from people like you to support our work supporting the Indigenous people of Panama.
Please take a moment to support our work with a donation of any amount.
Thank you and Happy International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples!
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