Introducing the 2025 Incomindios-Lippuner Scholar: Yadixa Del Valle
- Sophia Arnold
- Jun 3
- 5 min read
Updated: Jun 4
We are delighted that this year’s Incomindios-Lippuner Scholarship has been awarded to Yadixa Del Valle! Yadixa is a Guna woman from Panama, pursuing her Masters in Sociocultural & Linguistic Anthropology at Western University, Canada. Yadixa is breaking ground in Anthropology; not only is she the first person to research the cacao chant’s effect on childbirth in Guna culture, but was also the first Indigenous person in Panama to study Anthropology at the University of Panama, and is now the first Guna person to study Linguistic Anthropology at Western University. Her research aims to document oral traditions for the people of Guna Yala, facilitating longevity, the wider use of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK), and supporting the role of women in Guna communities.
Yadixa’s Research
Cacao, or siagwa to the Guna people, is central to Guna culture; it is used daily for nutritional, ceremonial, ritual, and social purposes, leading some scholars to compare it to a ‘keystone species’.1 Understood in oral traditions as a mythic woman, siagwa is central to rituals and ceremonies marking life events. The chant that Yadixa is documenting is one of 168 that are activated “in ceremonial contexts related to birth, death, spiritual healing, spiritual defense, and as a strong portal to communicate with the spiritual world”.2 These chants are practiced by specialists in the communities – learned through oral teachings – and “awake[n] the power of the cacao” during the ceremony.3
Yadixa first became interested in the cacao chants in 1998, reading research from the University of Panama about the variety and number of chants that exist across Guna Yala, and through her grandfather (Absogued) who is also a specialist in several chants. The chant central to Yadixa’s study is one specifically for childbirth. She will document the chant and birthing ceremony in practice, charting the use of language, how the chant is part of the traditional medical process, and the experience of women within the ceremony. The research will also explore why childbirth is faster when the cacao chant is used – something that has been evident in Guna communities, but never thoroughly studied or archived.
For centuries, and particularly since the Guna Revolution – “a direct result of the [Panamanian] government suppression” leading to Guna people asserting independence in 1925 –, Guna culture has been thriving in Guna Yala.4 To begin her research, Yadixa met with the leaders of the Guna General Congress, the highest political authority in Guna Yala, after the busy celebration period marking 100 years since the Guna Revolution. The Congress agreed that the work Yadixa is doing would be a valuable resource for the communities and affirmed the importance of this research; studying the language and cultural traditions is a cornerstone of Guna survival, especially as the knowledge-holders are aging and the rituals and chants must be passed onto future generations.5 It is only recently that documentation work to preserve ancestral knowledge for future generations has begun; the Guna people have rich oral traditions and Yadixa’s fieldwork will be a milestone in preserving this cultural knowledge, harnessing written traditions for the purpose of allowing the oral traditions to be passed on and activated by future generations.
Documentation is especially essential, as the chant incorporates many forms of language outside of everyday Guna language and terminology that may not be familiar to current and future generations. When Yadixa’s research is complete, it will be used as a resource through the new Guna Yala medical center. With this information readily available, Yadixa’s goal is that it could support women in obtaining documentation of the cacao chant so that they could analyze and interpret it, allowing them to use it as part of their traditional practices before giving birth. Yadixa also hopes that she can make visible women in the communities who already assume this role as practitioners.
More broadly, Yadixa also hopes her work will inspire other academics to take up the urgent work of documenting ceremonial chants. Despite its importance, cacao is significantly less available to many different Guna communities due to pathogens affecting the trees,6 and rising sea levels are forcing the Guna people to move from their traditional territories.7 The documentation work of oral histories and knowledges, then, is even more vital in the face of climate and environmental precarity.
Advocacy Work
Yadixa’s academic research is part of her wider commitment to Guna culture, Indigenous rights, Traditional Ecological Knowledge conservation, and empowering Guna women. Since 2022, Yadixa has been volunteering as the focal point for Indigenous peoples in Panama for the United Nations Small Grants Programme (PPD). The programme “provid[es] financial and technical support to projects that conserve and restore the environment while enhancing people's well-being and livelihoods".8 Yadixa works closely on project submissions for Indigenous Peoples in Panama, along with a wider team of experts, with projects supporting sustainable tourism, wildlife conservation, water protection, women’s work in agriculture, protection in ancestral knowledge, and much more. She also facilitates the implementation of the projects that receive PPD funding.
Alongside this, Yadixa participates in the National Coordinating Body of Indigenous Peoples in Panama (COONAPIP), which represents the seven Indigenous Peoples of Panama and their twelve recognized territories. Yadixa works as the Coordinator of Cultural Strengthening, strategising the risk to, as well as protection and promotion of, “traditional dress, gastronomy, mother language, intercultural and bilingual education, archaeology, and sacred sites”.9 This work aims to ensure that the Indigenous peoples of Panama can fully exercise their right to Buen Vivir, or good living. Stemming from the cosmovisions of the Quechua peoples, this worldview closely aligns with the Indigenous peoples of Panama and has become a guiding force in the advocacy, enhancement, and protection work of COONAPIP.
If you would like to learn more about Yadixa's work, please keep an eye on our social media channels and website for an upcoming talk about her research.
Jeffrey I. Barnes, “Cacao: A Cultural Keystone Species among the Kuna of Three Communities in San Bias, Panama” (Master’s diss., Carleton University, 2008), Library and Archives Canada (ISBN: 978-0 494-51998-1).
Jeffrey Barnes, “Where Chocolate Begins and Research Methods End: Understanding Kuna Cacao Consumption”, Human Organization 72, no.3 (2013), https://www.jstor.org/stable/44148714, 211.
Yadixa Del Valle, email to author, April 16, 2025.
Diana Marks, “The Kuna Mola: Dress, Politics and Cultural Survival”, Dress 40, no 1 (2014), https://doi org.chain.kent.ac.uk/10.1179/0361211214Z.00000000021, 19.
Yadixa Del Valle, interviewed by author, March 17, 2025.
Barnes, “Where Chocolate Begins and Research Methods End: Understanding Kuna Cacao Consumption”, 212.
Adri Salido, “Gardi Sugdub: The Americas' disappearing island”, BBC, 5 January 2024, https://www.bbc.co.uk/travel/article/20240105-gardi-sugdub-the-americas-disappearing-island
“Mission and History”, The GEF Small Grants Programme, accessed 16 April 2025, https://sgp.undp.org/about-us-157.html
Yadixa Del Valle, interviewed by author, March 17, 2025.
Authored and interviewed by Sophia Arnold.
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