Panamanian Adventures: Ipeti Emberá

Last week we made our way to another indigenous village called Ipeti Emberá. The Wounaan and Emberá indigenous peoples were historically considered one group in Colombia, the Chocó. By the late 1700s both began moving into Panama. Today they are two distinct groups with different languages yet they do share quite a similar culture. Approximately 3000 Wounaan and 15000 Emberá live in Panama, mostly in the Darién province to the east.

Our stay was much shorter than in Kuna Yala, only two days. Our trip here was in the context of our Geography class called 'Humans in Tropical Environments'. We are studying in different areas in Panama the ways in which human societies develop and operate in relation to their physical environment, and what role environmental features have in directly determining aspects of human behavior and society (idea of Environmental Determinism)

Over the past 15 years, basketry and general craft selling has become an increasingly valuable source of income for Emberá families. These crafts (woven baskets, jewelry, seed carvings etc) are sold to tourists in the area, or to intermediaries that sell them in Panama City or abroad.

We spent the afternoon collecting different materials needed to make the crafts. One group set out to collect the Jagua seed. This seed is used to make the body paint that adorns the bodies of the Emberá women. The exterior is peeled and the fruit is grated, the small pieces then squeezed in a cloth to remove the juices. These juices are then boiled and cooled and directly used as paint. The markings appear only after a couple of hours, and last 1-2 weeks. Some of us asked if we could get painted on our backs.. here is a photo!

My group left to collect the Chunga palm. The leaves of this palm are are used to weave their traditional baskets. The outer membrane is pulled off of the leave. Those pieces are then cleaned, dried and dyed if necessary (using natural dyes such as curry for the yellow, the Teca plant for the red, charcoal for the black, and this very cool root that looked like ginger that was used for the turquoise!). The Chunga is destructively harvested because it is heavily armed, with spines on its trunk that reach up to 20cm. This means that people often fell the entire tree to simply collect the few leaves available. More sustainable practices are being developed in the region by the Ministry of the Environment to avoid complete depletion of the palm that enables weavers to obtain anywhere from US$15 to US$500+ a month in an area where fulltime wage labor yields US$150 per month (these numbers are from 2002, so though things have changed since then, the general trends remain the same)

The next day we were lucky enough to give weaving a try. At the beginning I thought we would never be able to understand how to do even a small basket in the few hours that we had, but much to my surprise most of us finished! (See photos below)