Island Stories and Rising Tides

Keith Ingram

Welcome to Off the Map, y’all. I'm Keith Ingram, the Dallasite on Tour, and today we’re dropping anchor somewhere different. No resorts. No cruise ships. Just coral, canoes, and stories you won’t find in any travel brochure. With me is Nele Iguaibilo, our guide to Guna Yala—the Guna’s autonomous island world off Panama’s Caribbean coast. Nele, before we get into the big questions, can you just take us there with you? What was it like growing up in Carti Sugtupu?

Nele Iguaibilo

Thank you, Keith. My earliest memories are of salt air, the sound of paddles in the water before sunrise. Carti Sugtupu is just one small island in Guna Yala, but for me, it was an entire universe. We traveled everywhere by canoe—my uncles fishing, my cousins and I going to school, or visiting family. Our home was made of cane and thatch. We lived... all together—my grandmother, my mother, my aunts, cousins, siblings—sometimes even the husbands, but always, it was the women who made the rules. The island is so close you can walk the length of it in just a few minutes, but there is nowhere on earth more full of life.

Keith Ingram

That sounds... I mean, we talk about tight communities where I’m from, but that’s something else. What was a normal day for you? Was it all fishing and sunsets, or were there chores and school runs too?

Nele Iguaibilo

It was both. Every morning, someone would be out catching fish or collecting coconuts—the sea is our market, the coconut is like money. My grandmother would wake me early, before the roosters, to help her with breakfast or to watch the men head for the reef. After school, there was always work: helping my mother sew our molas, fetching water, cleaning fish. The days end with everyone sharing a meal—usually rice, plantains, always some seafood. Sometimes, at night, we'd go to the beach and play in the sand, or just watch the stars.

Keith Ingram

That mola art—it’s more than just a fabric, right? We’ll get deeper into that. But I gotta ask—did you ever get bored out there, or was it kinda like a new adventure every day?

Nele Iguaibilo

I never felt bored. There are always stories in the wind, in the tides. And sometimes, on clear nights, when the sea was very dark, we’d run along the shore and the water would glow around our feet. That’s bioluminescence. The first time I saw it, I thought it was spirits, or maybe the stars had come down to swim. I was maybe seven years old—it’s a memory that never leaves.

Keith Ingram

That's wild! Reminds me—okay, totally different climate, but when I was a boy in Texas, the fields would fill with fireflies. It’s that same magic—like the land is talking back to you, maybe.

Nele Iguaibilo

Yes. For us, everything has a spirit—the sea, the sand, even the wind. That is how we learn we must care for it. Not everyone knows this, but most of our islands—so many you can have a new one for every day of the year—are untouched by big hotels. Sometimes visitors come, but we decide what happens here. Even now, island life is ours.

Keith Ingram

I love that. No mass tourism, no noise. Just, real life. We could stay in these childhood memories all day, but I wanna ask—what did your grandmother teach you that you carry even now?

Nele Iguaibilo

My grandmother's hands taught me to sew molas before I was old enough to read a book. But more than technique, she would say, “Nele, this is how we have lived for five hundred years. The sea gives. We take only what we need.” I did not understand then. Now I do.

Keith Ingram

That’s beautiful, Nele. And that brings us to the way y’all run things out there. People hear “indigenous islands” and think it’s just some simple life, right? But Guna Yala is self-governed. Can you break that down? How does society actually work?

Nele Iguaibilo

The Guna people—we are not a tourist attraction. We are a nation. We have our own laws, our government, our way of seeing the world. Our society is matrilineal—lineage, inheritance, even where you live—it all comes from the woman's side. When a man marries, he moves in with his wife’s family. Women are the keepers of tradition—the creators of mola art, the storytellers. Our leaders are called sahilas, and decisions are made in the congress house, where everyone comes together. When Panama tried to take our way away in 1925, we fought back. We revolted—and we won. Since then, Panama recognizes Guna Yala as a comarca, our self-governed territory. That is not something you will read in most history books.

Keith Ingram

A revolution. That’s not just surviving, that’s thriving—with your own rules. Let’s come back to molas for a second. You said it’s not just decoration. What do they mean to you—what did your grandmother’s molas tell you?

Nele Iguaibilo

The mola—the textile art on our blouses—it is not decoration. It is language. Every pattern tells a story or holds a memory. Some molas are geometric, echoing the twists of rivers or the shapes of sea creatures. Others show spirits from our cosmology—the giant turtle, the ancestral octopus, even the spirits that protect the wind. My grandmother made her first mola as a girl. Over her life, she created hundreds, each one different. When I hold her work, I hear stories she may not have spoken out loud. UNESCO has recognized the mola as heritage, but for us, it is a bridge—between past and future.

Keith Ingram

That reminds me of my own grandma, honestly—not the art part, but the way she’d weave stories at Sunday dinners. It’s women who set the culture, even if the world sometimes acts like that’s not the case. Where I grew up, telling stories was how we knew who we were.

Nele Iguaibilo

Yes, it is the same for us. Women shape the identity of the Guna. With every stitch in a mola, you are remembering an ancestor—or leaving a message for the next ones. Even the youngest girls learn which designs speak of the ocean, which ones hold a warning from the elders. It is art, but it is also resistance. When I teach visitors, I always say: the mola survives because we defend it. Our identity is in every thread.

Keith Ingram

Makes me wish I could see one up close right now. I gotta say—I’m picking up something here: respect. For the women, for the art, for autonomy. But—lately, y’all are having to fight new battles, aren’t you?

Nele Iguaibilo

Yes. Today, our enemy is not a government. It is the sea itself. The sea is rising. Two of our islands—ones where families lived for generations—are already lost. My own home may be next. I will be honest with you. I am scared. This is not politics for me. This is my family. This is my home. I think of my nieces, who now live on the mainland, and they ask me all the time—“Tía, will we ever see the island where you grew up?” I do not have an answer. But I know that I have to teach them everything before it is too late. The patterns of the mola. The songs. The laws of respect for the sea. Because soon, we may only have the memory.

Keith Ingram

Damn, that hits hard. I mean, hearing it from you—it’s not just about climate change headlines anymore. It’s kids wondering if they’ll ever see their own roots. What can folks listening do? Is there anything outsiders can do to help?

Nele Iguaibilo

What I ask is simple, but not easy. When I share Guna Yala with outsiders, I am not selling a vacation. I am asking you to see us. To remember us. To care what happens next. The Guna people—we are an example of self-governance, of defending identity, even as the world changes. If you ever come here, come with respect. Learn our stories. Honor our laws. And do not forget us when the islands are gone. That is all I ask.

Keith Ingram

That’s a powerful note to end on. Y’all, if you listened this far—let what Nele said sink in. These islands might not last another lifetime, but the Guna story needs to. Nele, thank you for sharing it with us—truly. You made this place real for all of us.

Nele Iguaibilo

Thank you, Keith. And thank you to everyone listening, for hearing not just my words, but what we are fighting for.

Keith Ingram

That wraps us for this episode of Off the Map, folks. I hope you took something with you—maybe a little wonder, maybe a little responsibility. We’ll be back in two weeks with another voice from a place you won’t find in a guidebook. Take care out there. Nele, it was an honor.

Nele Iguaibilo

Thank you, Keith. Goodbye to everyone—may you remember us.

Keith Ingram

See y’all next time. Bye now.