When I was a child, my grandmother bathed me with different herbs, barks, and flowers to protect me and help my spirit become strong. I have no doubt her traditional medicine and ancient chants have continued to bless and shield me throughout my adult life. My grandmother, her home, her community, and her cultural traditions are all at risk of disappearing underneath the rising waters of climate change.
I am from the Guna community, indigenous people of Central America. I was raised on Playon Chico, an island off the northern coast of Panama. With a population of around 3,500 people, it is one of the places most affected by sea-level rise in Panama. In my lifetime, the Guna islands will disappear under the rising sea, creating some of the world’s earliest climate change refugees. The children—or burwigans*7—of my island are already the unknowing victims.
Knowing the risk my indigenous culture is facing, I created the Burwigan Project. Through art, we raise awareness and draw the attention of the Panamanian national government and international organizations to this urgent issue, helping mobilize funds to relocate our community to the mainland. The art trips we organize to the islands have opened doors to tourism based on sustainable development principles.
For our tours, we connect artists from different disciplines and different parts of the world with the children and women of Guna. In the tours, artists, teachers, children, and the community work together on projects where they learn about environmental protection. We document the impact of plastic pollution and climate change on the islands, then exhibit the work of each artist in different parts of the city to inform, involve, and inspire action around plastic pollution and climate change. Through photography, video, storytelling, music, fashion, and other installations, each artist’s unique approach helps translate complex data into simple visuals people can immediately relate to and understand—all the while spreading awareness throughout the Guna community. In addition to art, we also held martial arts workshops to empower children through alternative teaching methods