Myrna Cunningham

Myrna Kay Cunningham Kain is a Miskito feminist, indigenous rights activist and medical surgeon from Nicaragua. She has participated in political-social processes linked to the struggle for the rights of women and indigenous peoples in Latin America. She has been coordinator of the Indigenous Chair of the Intercultural Indigenous University.

In September 2010, she obtained an Honoris Causa Doctorate from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, the first time that the UNAM granted such recognition to an indigenous woman. From 2011 to 2013, she was chair of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues of the UN. She served as the chairperson of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues until 2012.

She is also the president of the Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID) where she works to advance the rights of indigenous women and knowledge on indigenous peoples and the impacts of climate change, serving as FAO Special Ambassador for the International Year of Family Farming, adviser to the president of the UN World Conference of Indigenous People, and on boards of the Global Fund for Women, Permanent UN Forum on Indigenous Issues, the Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID), and The Hunger Project.

She is currently chairperson of the Center for Autonomy and Development of Indigenous People (CADPI) and vice president of the board of the Latin American and Caribbean Indigenous People Development Fund.

Career

Early career Cunningham first studied to be a primary school teacher and she worked as a teacher within her Waspam community in northeast of Nicaragua along Coco River at the border with Honduras. After several years, she went back to school to study medicine at the National Autonomous University of Nicaragua at León (UNAN-León), and she became the first Miskito doctor in Nicaragua. After completing her studies she returned to the Miskito region where she started to work as a general practitioner and later as a surgeon. She was active with work in public health within the Waspam community until 1979. During the Sandinista Revolution, she worked in the Ministry of Public Health, including in the role of Director of investigation and planning. After the revolution she returned again to the Miskito region where she became the first woman governor of the autonomous region.

She helped to negotiate some of the peace agreements after the conflict in Nicaragua, setting the stage for the Law of Autonomy of the Indigenous Peoples and Ethnic Communities from the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua in 1987. She also helped to create the first autonomous regional government. She served as the Deputy of the Autonomous Region of the North Atlantic Coast in the National Assembly RAAN.

Recent work

In 2010, the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), awarded Cunningham an honorary doctorate. She was the first indigenous woman to receive an honorary degree from UNAM.

Cunningham was a member of the Board of Directors of the Global Fund for Women and also advised the Alliance of Indigenous Women of Mexico and Central America, the Continental Network of Indigenous Women and the International Indigenous Women's Forum.

In 2012, the human rights organization MADRE awarded Cunningham with the Woman of Distinction Award.