The radio station giving indigenous people a voice

Image source, Grace Livingstone

The high-rises and glass towers of Panama City gleam in the sunlight.

On the other side of town, there is an old office block where you can find a small radio studio.

Voces Originarias Panam is Panama's first indigenous people's radio station and is now broadcast across the country.

Half a million indigenous people make up 12% of Panama's population and speak seven different languages. Dad Neba says it is time for them to have a voice.

He says that they want to speak for themselves and show the needs of their people.

Image source, Getty Images

The idea of the station came about when it was necessary to get health information to isolated communities.

He operates the station with a DJ who plays a range of music from traditional songs to indigenous rock and rap.

It was launched last year by the National Coordination Body of Indigenous Peoples of Panama (COONAPIP), which represents all the traditional indigenous authorities of Panama.

The radio station is an important tool to defend the rights of indigenous people.

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"From every corner of the country, indigenous people can send news to the station in their own language." says the president of COONAPIP.

They can talk about the problems they face in their territories, whether that be incursions onto their lands, lack of health facilities, or clean water.

There are seven different indigenous peoples in Panama.

Mr Neba is from Guna Yala, an indigenous territory spread across hundreds of islands off the Caribbean coast of Panama. He has been teaching people how to make radio programmes for years in community radio.

Arona says that they learned how to write a script, gather information, record sound, and much more at one of his workshops.

Image source, Grace Livingstone

Most people here are subsistence farmers, such as Ms Membache, who cultivates maize, rice, and yams. She teaches traditional dances to children in her spare time.

She uses her cell phones to send reports in the local language and audio recordings of the dances.

Caselina Bacorizo, a fellow resident of Arimae, says that having our own radio station is important to her. We could use it to teach our children about our culture.

Arimae has a population of over 1000. Many residents live in wooden houses with thatched palm rooves, while others live in homes made of breeze blocks and corrugated iron.

Image source, Grace Livingstone

The people in Arimae are from two different groups. The community was formed in 1969 to defend themselves from road builders. The Pan American Highway was built right through the rainforest where they lived.

Abrego Membeche, one of the founding fathers of Arimae, says that when the road came, there were serious problems. We had to demand action from the government.

The community finally got a title to their lands in 2015, but it is a much smaller area than it used to be. They have lost more than 600sq km over the past 50 years.

The virgin forest was cut down by loggers and farmers after the road was built. The radio station should highlight the importance of protecting nature.

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Bacorizo is the president of the congress.

The forest gives us life. We get oxygen. Without it, we wouldn't be able to breathe. We have to care for nature because it cares for us.

The rainforest covers more than half of Panamanian territory. There are large areas of mangroves.

The Panamanian government has strengthened its environmental laws over the last 20 years, but it is still a concern for indigenous peoples.

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The government of Panama has five separate and semi-autonomous indigenous areas in the country. Dozens of smaller indigenous communities do not have formal titles to their lands, which are under threat from cattle ranching, logging, agriculture and the mining industry.

The largest mine opened in the country in 2019.

73,000 hectares of primary rainforest were lost in Panama between 2001 and 2019. In that period, Arimae saw the greatest amount of destruction, amounting to 104,000 hectares.

Mariela says that the radio station could be used to talk about the need to conserve.

We could use the radio station to raise awareness. We could replant the forest.

Image source, Grace Livingstone

The radio station can help indigenous people defend their lands and the environment by allowing them to grow food for their own consumption or a mixture of small scale agriculture and subsistence farming.

Voces Originarias is a radio station. It can be hard to hear the radio station online because of patchy cell-phone coverage. Many residents of Arimae want the station to have an analogue radio frequency so it can be picked up by traditional radios.

The radio station is new. Volunteers in the offices of COONPIP run it.

It received financing from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, but now funds are low.

Dad Neba is determined to keep the radio station going.