Commemorate International Indigenous Peoples Day
The initiation of this feast was done through a spiritual ritual performed in conjunction with wise and wise.
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Neylin Calderon
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Youth Forum: Identity and Future, dedicated to Dr. Dionicio Melgara "in memorian"

URACCAN, through the Institute of Studies and Promotion of Autonomy (IEPA) of the Bilwi campus, in conjunction with the National Institute of Culture (INC) and the Ministry of Culture of the Autonomous Regional Government of the Nicaraguan Caribbean Coast, commemorated the International Day of Indigenous Peoples with the realization of the "Youth Forum: Identity and Future, dedicated to Dr. Honoris Causa of the URACCAN , Dionicio Melgara in Memorian".

This activity was carried out at the House of Culture, in the city of Bilwi, where there were the participation of two panelists, who presented themes related to the historical milestone of the commemoration of indigenous peoples, in addition to addressing the current situation that the peoples of the Caribbean Coast live before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Spaces for intercultural dialogue

According to teacher Sesiah Davis, representative of the IEPA, these events are of great relevance to the university, because "they represent a space of intercultural dialogue where we have the opportunity to raise new topics and be able to bring them to analysis and consensus".

For her part, teacher Deborah Bush, director of the INC, said that this activity was held in order to commemorate one more year the declaration of the International Day of Indigenous Peoples. "The INC, the Ministry of Culture, URACCAN, met in order to transfer knowledge, this generic discussion, but fundamentally with youth, youth need to know why this day was declared and why this day is important for the knowledge of historical law, historical and collective claims of Afro-descendant peoples," Bush explained.

COID-19 and the resilience of indigenous peoples

Teacher Sandra Rojas Hooker, director of IEPA-URACCAN, said that since the institution it is considered important to have such spaces of dialogue, especially with youth regarding the importance of being indigenous, "to make known our individual identity, but that within that we belong to a larger group and the importance that we can make a space of convergence to establish mechanisms that allow us to have meeting points and establish strategies of something in particular that affects us."

Rojas emphasized some impacts that indigenous peoples have had in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. "One of these is the issue of the exercise of collective participation, as a community, as a collective, since communal assemblies, territorial assemblies, are decision-making spaces, but the same process and WHO regulations establish social estating and how to make it effective in the community, but without setting aside what is the exercise we have as indigenous peoples" , the academic explained.

Identity of indigenous peoples

For his part, br. Genaro Padilla Pinner, student of the Senior Technician in Cultural Management of URACCAN Bilwi campus, called these moments of participation and dialogues with youth important, because it allows them to "identify what are the international laws that have been ratified by the ILO and the United Nations, how as young people we can recognize and appropriate those laws that each State has been guaranteed so that we can exercise our collective rights well , both in ancestral, lively practices, to carry out the care and protection of our natural resources".

It should be noted that the initiation of this feast was done through a spiritual ritual performed in conjunction with wise and wise peoples of the indigenous, Afro-descendant and mixed-race peoples of the Caribbean Coast.