 On March 27, 1993, Barthakasaras and her comrades founded the Council of Popular and Indigenous Organisations of Honduras or Copin. The motive was to strengthen and give voice to the struggle of the Indigenous people in Honduras whose rights, culture, history and identity were denied by the state. In these years, Copin activists have been leading movements fighting for Indigenous people's rights over land and resources. They have directly taken on mega projects that threaten to force them out of their territories and ancestral lands and won major victories. In the process, Copin leaders regularly face threats, harassment and violence. Several human rights defenders have also been killed. This includes Barthakasaras. Bartha was a key figure in the resistance against the Agua Zarka Hydroelectric Dam project on the Gualcarre River. She was assassinated in March 2016. She had been regularly facing threats from DESA, the company which was running the Agua Zarka project. Last year, David Castillo, former president of the company, was found guilty in the assassination of Casaras. Bartha co-founded Copin along with other comrades because they felt that in the revolutionary movements of the 1980s in the region, Central America, the struggle of the Indigenous people and the battles against patriarchy were not taken into account sufficiently. In Honduras, there was almost no official recognition of the Indigenous and Afro-descended people who today comprise just around one million members of the population. The exact numbers are difficult to find, especially due to the same historic process of denial and invisibility of these populations. Copin has been working arduously along with other organizations to raise consciousness of the existence and resistance of the Indigenous and Afro-descended Garifuna populations who were on the front lines of the battles against neoliberal, extractivist, militaristic, racist and sexist onslaught in the 1990s. One of their early achievements was forcing Honduras to ratify the International Labour Organization Convention 169 in 1995, which states that there must be a free, prior and informed cultural rotation of the Indigenous or ethnic communities if the state wishes to pursue an extractive project in their territory. This same convention has been the legal pillar of Copin's current struggle against the Aguazarca hydroelectric project. In 1994, as a result of Copin's organizing, the first Indigenous municipality was founded in the Department of Intibuca. Copin's comprehensive perspective on colonialism and its persistent impact is also reflected in an action that led in 1998 to take down the Christopher Columbus statue in the plaza outside the National Congress in Tugucigalpa and replace it with the statue of Lampira, an Indigenous Lenka leader who played a crucial part in the resistance to the Spanish colonial rule. The Lampira statue stands to this day. Copin also took the anti-patriarchal struggle very seriously and brought to life a feminism deeply rooted in Indigenous organizing practices. Bertha played a key role in the process. Honduras is a deeply patriarchal society and though it has a rich history of rebellion and struggle across many sectors, it was almost unheard of for women to be spokespeople, let alone leaders and strategizers. Bertha transformed perspectives and paradigms not only by raising her voice and taking an active role in the organization but by making the struggle against patriarchy a cornerstone of the work of Copin. On the anniversary last year, Copin stated, 26 years of resistance and struggle, we continue to ignite the flame of liberation, the flame that we promised to light together in the first mobilization. We continue fighting for life freedom and justice. We continue to tear down the symbols of colonialism.