About the Conference
We at IFIP are dedicating our upcoming Latin America Indigenous Funders Conference to Berta Caceres and other warriors that have fallen in fighting to protect our Mother Earth. In addition we will provide a pre- workshop to both Indigenous leaders and donors on the best strategies and practices to support threatened indigenous leaders and communities.
About the conference: The Latin America Indigenous Funders Conference will be a unique event that will bring leaders from the Indigenous, donor, and corporate worlds to the same table, with the potential to turn the coming tide of extinction of species, languages and cultures.
As countries, corporations and communities around the world are increasingly focusing their attention on developing effective ways to decrease the effects of global warming, indigenous communities around the world are providing solutions. The International Funders for Indigenous Peoples is the only global donor affinity group dedicated solely to Indigenous peoples around the world. IFIP works from a simple premise: that face-to-face engagement is essential to Indigenous philanthropy. Join us. There is no time to lose.
Keynote Speaker: Dr. Myrna Cunningham
Myrna is an Indigenous Miskita and a former member of the National Assembly of Nicaragua where she also served in the Ministry of Health and as Governor of the autonomous North Atlantic Coast region. She founded the University of the Autonomous Regions of the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua and served as the General Secretary of the Inter-American Indigenous Institute. In 2002, she received the Pan American Health Organization’s Public Health Heroine of the Americas Award. She has extensive experience on the rights of Indigenous Peoples, also as Secretary General of the Indigenous Inter-American Institute, and she has served on the board of several organizations to promote the rights of Indigenous women, including the International Indigenous Women’s Forum (FIMI). She is a past chair of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.
Pre-conference Workshop on Indigenous Security and Well-being and Plenary Session
Indigenous Security and Well-being Workshop
In response to the lethal security risks for Indigenous activists, particularly in Latin America, IFIP created the first donor workshop on Indigenous Security. The goal of this workshop is for donors to identify at least ten concrete steps to support Indigenous communities at risk of violence for their activism.
Panelists
Tatiana Cordero, Executive Director of the Urgent Action Fund Latin America, will lead the discussion between donors and Indigenous leaders on the path ahead.
Angela Martinez, Senior Program Officer for Latin America for American Jewish World Service, and Laura Zuniga, the daughter of Berta Cáceres, the Honduran Indigenous leader murdered this year, will provide context for the workshop.
IFIP’s first report on Indigenous security issues, Protection for Defenders: How Funders Can Support the Safety and Security of Indigenous Environmental Defenders in Latin America, will serve as a basis for the discussion.