Myrna Cunningham

Myrna Kay Cunningham Kain is a Miskito feminist, indigenous rights activist and medical surgeon from Nicaragua.

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.

She has been a promoter before international cooperation agencies in the search for funds and development of an external cooperation culturally respectful with indigenous peoples and has worked on intercultural health issues and traditional medicine, in addition to continuing to collaborate with the Autonomous Regional Governments of Nicaragua in the process of establishing Intercultural Health Models.

In 1994, Cunningham founded the University of the Autonomous Regions of the Nicaraguan Caribbean Coast, one of the first higher education for indigenous people, which has become a model for the continent.

For the Tropical Agricultural Research and the Center for Higher Education she works on the projects to fight hunger and famine and supports a trust fund for Indigenous Peoples.

CunninghamCunningham is also the first vice president of the board of directors of the fund for the development of indigenous peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean.

[citation needed] In 1994 she was elected to the national directorate of the SNLF as part of a movement to increase women's representation at the highest levels of the SNLF; other women elected at the same time included Dorotea Wilson, Mónica Baltodano, Benigna Mendiola and Dora Maria Tellez.