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Occupy Amazonia? Indigenous activists are taking direct action – and it’s working Updated for 2026

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The native peoples of Loreto, in Peru’s Amazon basin, have just ended a month long occupation of 14 oil wells belonging to the Argentine company Pluspetrol.

Negotiations are still underway between the oil company and various other communities, represented by the indigenous association Feconaco.

This is not the first time Feconaco has occupied Pluspetrol’s operations. Such actions on the part of indigenous groups are relatively common.

Amazonian people don’t appear to have learned direct action from the Occupy Movement or from Euro-American protest traditions, despite the similar tactics. In the absence of functioning state protection, native people have always had to stand up for themselves.

Last September, for instance, Ka’apor people of northeastern Maranhão in Brazil published photographs of illegal loggers whom they had captured and tied up. They had taken matters into their own hands because the state was not protecting their territory.

The pioneers of indigenous direct action were the Kayapó of southern Pará in Brazil, who began monitoring goldmining and later logging in their territory, which senior leaders tolerated and indeed profited from.

In the early 1990s, environmental destruction and mercury poisoning led many Kayapó people to support a younger generation of leaders who expelled the miners and loggers from their territory. Images of the Kayapó have since become synonymous with indigenous environmentalism.

A history of exploitation

The relative success of direct action in recent decades contrasts with the often bloody encounters that went before, from which poorly-armed Indians invariably emerged badly.

Indigenous people in the Amazon have been the victims of the mining and energy industries for hundreds of years. The earliest colonists were motivated by greed for gold, and successive waves of exploitation have followed. The violent and coercive labour relations of the rubber boom (which ended a century ago) continue to affect how local people view trade and outsiders.

Fur hunters would shoot native people on sight throughout much of the 20th century. A good friend of mine, one of my principal informants in the field, fled Brazil as a child after his family were killed by fur hunters, and came to live with another tribe in the border area between French Guiana and Suriname.

Here, and across the Guiana region (the vast area of northeastern Amazonia bordered by the rivers Negro, Orinoco and the lower Amazon), mining for gold, diamonds and other minerals has led to significant social conflicts.

The region’s small communities are held together by personal ties of kinship and are highly dependent upon local ecosystems for their livelihoods. This makes them particularly vulnerable to the side-effects of extractive industries such as environmental destruction and pollution of rivers and lakes. But there are also social and medical effects: prostitution, alcoholism, drug addiction and the introduction of new diseases such as HIV.

Mining and oil companies generally earn a bad reputation for their Amazon activities, but projects devised in the name of ‘sustainability’ can have a negative impact too. Think in particular of the programme of hydroelectric dams being rolled out across Brazil.

Belo Monte, the world’s fourth largest hydroelectric dam, is being built across a southern tributary of the Amazon, for instance. It has already caused the influx of tens of thousands of workers, with severe strain on local social relations. Its impact on a vast ecosystem – a major hydrological basin – will be monumental.

Protests against the Belo Monte dam have failed, as a Brazilian government focused on development ploughed on with its project which is, after all, consistent with the political rhetoric of the ‘green economy’. Indigenous people are a small section of the electorate, and their voice cuts little sway in the national political scene.

Companies in the crosshairs

Protests against international private companies can arguably be more effective, in so far as the directors of these companies consider a poor public image to significantly affect their profits.

A legal battle raging for nearly two decades between indigenous peoples in Ecuador and the energy giant Chevron, contributed to the corporation earning the title of a Lifetime Award for Shameful Corporate Behaviour by grassroots satirists in Davos earlier this year. Yet the corporate social responsibility activities which result from such pressures all too often seem to be largely cosmetic.

Where direct action has succeeded it is largely thanks to the construction of new kinds of alliances between indigenous leaders, progressive and socially oriented NGOs, and independent activists, including some academics.

Indigenous people in the Amazon basin have gradually, over the centuries, become more adept at getting organised and speaking the language of power. They’re now a key part of a global indigenous peoples’ movement which can call on an increasing number of activists with training in international law, documentary film making, or indeed anthropology, to assist campaigning efforts.

On a smaller scale, communities regularly engage with different projects brought by outsiders, including the ‘partnerships’ proposed by extractive industries. However, they just as often come to regret their entrance into the relationship.

Indigenous people come to realise that their understandings of fair exchanges are not the same, and sometimes not even compatible with those of their interlocutors, whether they be loggers, miners, or people looking for more intangible wealth such as traditional designs, music or ecological knowledge.

These experiences show that the conflicts that sometimes arise between native people and outsiders seeking to extract natural resources are not merely conflicts of material interests, and are not structured merely by an imbalance of power. They are on a more fundamental level conflicts of worldviews, of cosmovisiones, as Afro-Colombians sometimes call them.

Indigenous people have made vast efforts to speak across the gap between themselves and others who live and move in the capitalist world. The onus is now on outsiders, including postcolonial states and transnational organisations, to make a corresponding effort.

 

 

Marc Brightman is Lecturer in Social and Environmental Sustainability in the Department of Anthropology at University College London. Together with Jerome Lewis, he is co-founder and co-director of the Centre for the Anthropology of Sustainability.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The Conversation

 




391337

Occupy Amazonia? Indigenous activists are taking direct action – and it’s working Updated for 2026

Leave a reply




The native peoples of Loreto, in Peru’s Amazon basin, have just ended a month long occupation of 14 oil wells belonging to the Argentine company Pluspetrol.

Negotiations are still underway between the oil company and various other communities, represented by the indigenous association Feconaco.

This is not the first time Feconaco has occupied Pluspetrol’s operations. Such actions on the part of indigenous groups are relatively common.

Amazonian people don’t appear to have learned direct action from the Occupy Movement or from Euro-American protest traditions, despite the similar tactics. In the absence of functioning state protection, native people have always had to stand up for themselves.

Last September, for instance, Ka’apor people of northeastern Maranhão in Brazil published photographs of illegal loggers whom they had captured and tied up. They had taken matters into their own hands because the state was not protecting their territory.

The pioneers of indigenous direct action were the Kayapó of southern Pará in Brazil, who began monitoring goldmining and later logging in their territory, which senior leaders tolerated and indeed profited from.

In the early 1990s, environmental destruction and mercury poisoning led many Kayapó people to support a younger generation of leaders who expelled the miners and loggers from their territory. Images of the Kayapó have since become synonymous with indigenous environmentalism.

A history of exploitation

The relative success of direct action in recent decades contrasts with the often bloody encounters that went before, from which poorly-armed Indians invariably emerged badly.

Indigenous people in the Amazon have been the victims of the mining and energy industries for hundreds of years. The earliest colonists were motivated by greed for gold, and successive waves of exploitation have followed. The violent and coercive labour relations of the rubber boom (which ended a century ago) continue to affect how local people view trade and outsiders.

Fur hunters would shoot native people on sight throughout much of the 20th century. A good friend of mine, one of my principal informants in the field, fled Brazil as a child after his family were killed by fur hunters, and came to live with another tribe in the border area between French Guiana and Suriname.

Here, and across the Guiana region (the vast area of northeastern Amazonia bordered by the rivers Negro, Orinoco and the lower Amazon), mining for gold, diamonds and other minerals has led to significant social conflicts.

The region’s small communities are held together by personal ties of kinship and are highly dependent upon local ecosystems for their livelihoods. This makes them particularly vulnerable to the side-effects of extractive industries such as environmental destruction and pollution of rivers and lakes. But there are also social and medical effects: prostitution, alcoholism, drug addiction and the introduction of new diseases such as HIV.

Mining and oil companies generally earn a bad reputation for their Amazon activities, but projects devised in the name of ‘sustainability’ can have a negative impact too. Think in particular of the programme of hydroelectric dams being rolled out across Brazil.

Belo Monte, the world’s fourth largest hydroelectric dam, is being built across a southern tributary of the Amazon, for instance. It has already caused the influx of tens of thousands of workers, with severe strain on local social relations. Its impact on a vast ecosystem – a major hydrological basin – will be monumental.

Protests against the Belo Monte dam have failed, as a Brazilian government focused on development ploughed on with its project which is, after all, consistent with the political rhetoric of the ‘green economy’. Indigenous people are a small section of the electorate, and their voice cuts little sway in the national political scene.

Companies in the crosshairs

Protests against international private companies can arguably be more effective, in so far as the directors of these companies consider a poor public image to significantly affect their profits.

A legal battle raging for nearly two decades between indigenous peoples in Ecuador and the energy giant Chevron, contributed to the corporation earning the title of a Lifetime Award for Shameful Corporate Behaviour by grassroots satirists in Davos earlier this year. Yet the corporate social responsibility activities which result from such pressures all too often seem to be largely cosmetic.

Where direct action has succeeded it is largely thanks to the construction of new kinds of alliances between indigenous leaders, progressive and socially oriented NGOs, and independent activists, including some academics.

Indigenous people in the Amazon basin have gradually, over the centuries, become more adept at getting organised and speaking the language of power. They’re now a key part of a global indigenous peoples’ movement which can call on an increasing number of activists with training in international law, documentary film making, or indeed anthropology, to assist campaigning efforts.

On a smaller scale, communities regularly engage with different projects brought by outsiders, including the ‘partnerships’ proposed by extractive industries. However, they just as often come to regret their entrance into the relationship.

Indigenous people come to realise that their understandings of fair exchanges are not the same, and sometimes not even compatible with those of their interlocutors, whether they be loggers, miners, or people looking for more intangible wealth such as traditional designs, music or ecological knowledge.

These experiences show that the conflicts that sometimes arise between native people and outsiders seeking to extract natural resources are not merely conflicts of material interests, and are not structured merely by an imbalance of power. They are on a more fundamental level conflicts of worldviews, of cosmovisiones, as Afro-Colombians sometimes call them.

Indigenous people have made vast efforts to speak across the gap between themselves and others who live and move in the capitalist world. The onus is now on outsiders, including postcolonial states and transnational organisations, to make a corresponding effort.

 

 

Marc Brightman is Lecturer in Social and Environmental Sustainability in the Department of Anthropology at University College London. Together with Jerome Lewis, he is co-founder and co-director of the Centre for the Anthropology of Sustainability.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The Conversation

 




391337

Occupy Amazonia? Indigenous activists are taking direct action – and it’s working Updated for 2026

Leave a reply




The native peoples of Loreto, in Peru’s Amazon basin, have just ended a month long occupation of 14 oil wells belonging to the Argentine company Pluspetrol.

Negotiations are still underway between the oil company and various other communities, represented by the indigenous association Feconaco.

This is not the first time Feconaco has occupied Pluspetrol’s operations. Such actions on the part of indigenous groups are relatively common.

Amazonian people don’t appear to have learned direct action from the Occupy Movement or from Euro-American protest traditions, despite the similar tactics. In the absence of functioning state protection, native people have always had to stand up for themselves.

Last September, for instance, Ka’apor people of northeastern Maranhão in Brazil published photographs of illegal loggers whom they had captured and tied up. They had taken matters into their own hands because the state was not protecting their territory.

The pioneers of indigenous direct action were the Kayapó of southern Pará in Brazil, who began monitoring goldmining and later logging in their territory, which senior leaders tolerated and indeed profited from.

In the early 1990s, environmental destruction and mercury poisoning led many Kayapó people to support a younger generation of leaders who expelled the miners and loggers from their territory. Images of the Kayapó have since become synonymous with indigenous environmentalism.

A history of exploitation

The relative success of direct action in recent decades contrasts with the often bloody encounters that went before, from which poorly-armed Indians invariably emerged badly.

Indigenous people in the Amazon have been the victims of the mining and energy industries for hundreds of years. The earliest colonists were motivated by greed for gold, and successive waves of exploitation have followed. The violent and coercive labour relations of the rubber boom (which ended a century ago) continue to affect how local people view trade and outsiders.

Fur hunters would shoot native people on sight throughout much of the 20th century. A good friend of mine, one of my principal informants in the field, fled Brazil as a child after his family were killed by fur hunters, and came to live with another tribe in the border area between French Guiana and Suriname.

Here, and across the Guiana region (the vast area of northeastern Amazonia bordered by the rivers Negro, Orinoco and the lower Amazon), mining for gold, diamonds and other minerals has led to significant social conflicts.

The region’s small communities are held together by personal ties of kinship and are highly dependent upon local ecosystems for their livelihoods. This makes them particularly vulnerable to the side-effects of extractive industries such as environmental destruction and pollution of rivers and lakes. But there are also social and medical effects: prostitution, alcoholism, drug addiction and the introduction of new diseases such as HIV.

Mining and oil companies generally earn a bad reputation for their Amazon activities, but projects devised in the name of ‘sustainability’ can have a negative impact too. Think in particular of the programme of hydroelectric dams being rolled out across Brazil.

Belo Monte, the world’s fourth largest hydroelectric dam, is being built across a southern tributary of the Amazon, for instance. It has already caused the influx of tens of thousands of workers, with severe strain on local social relations. Its impact on a vast ecosystem – a major hydrological basin – will be monumental.

Protests against the Belo Monte dam have failed, as a Brazilian government focused on development ploughed on with its project which is, after all, consistent with the political rhetoric of the ‘green economy’. Indigenous people are a small section of the electorate, and their voice cuts little sway in the national political scene.

Companies in the crosshairs

Protests against international private companies can arguably be more effective, in so far as the directors of these companies consider a poor public image to significantly affect their profits.

A legal battle raging for nearly two decades between indigenous peoples in Ecuador and the energy giant Chevron, contributed to the corporation earning the title of a Lifetime Award for Shameful Corporate Behaviour by grassroots satirists in Davos earlier this year. Yet the corporate social responsibility activities which result from such pressures all too often seem to be largely cosmetic.

Where direct action has succeeded it is largely thanks to the construction of new kinds of alliances between indigenous leaders, progressive and socially oriented NGOs, and independent activists, including some academics.

Indigenous people in the Amazon basin have gradually, over the centuries, become more adept at getting organised and speaking the language of power. They’re now a key part of a global indigenous peoples’ movement which can call on an increasing number of activists with training in international law, documentary film making, or indeed anthropology, to assist campaigning efforts.

On a smaller scale, communities regularly engage with different projects brought by outsiders, including the ‘partnerships’ proposed by extractive industries. However, they just as often come to regret their entrance into the relationship.

Indigenous people come to realise that their understandings of fair exchanges are not the same, and sometimes not even compatible with those of their interlocutors, whether they be loggers, miners, or people looking for more intangible wealth such as traditional designs, music or ecological knowledge.

These experiences show that the conflicts that sometimes arise between native people and outsiders seeking to extract natural resources are not merely conflicts of material interests, and are not structured merely by an imbalance of power. They are on a more fundamental level conflicts of worldviews, of cosmovisiones, as Afro-Colombians sometimes call them.

Indigenous people have made vast efforts to speak across the gap between themselves and others who live and move in the capitalist world. The onus is now on outsiders, including postcolonial states and transnational organisations, to make a corresponding effort.

 

 

Marc Brightman is Lecturer in Social and Environmental Sustainability in the Department of Anthropology at University College London. Together with Jerome Lewis, he is co-founder and co-director of the Centre for the Anthropology of Sustainability.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The Conversation

 




391337

‘The Falling Sky’ – words of a Yanomami shaman Updated for 2026

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With scarcely a day going by without further bad news about declines in global flora and fauna and increases in greenhouse gas emissions, it is no longer so easy to dismiss ‘end of the world’ myths in indigenous culture as quaint relics of outmoded cultures.

Indeed many of these myths seem uncannily relevant as we move steadily closer towards environmental catastrophe.

The ‘falling sky’ in the title of this book refers to the Yanomami belief that, after the death of the last shaman, no one will be left to hold up the sky so it will collapse on top of the earth again, as in the beginning of time. Davi Kopenawa, himself a Yanomami shaman, has a clear idea of the sequence of events:

“When the white people tear dangerous minerals out of the depths of the earth, our breath becomes too short and we die very quickly … If the breath of life of all our people dies out, the forest will become empty and silent. Our ghosts will then go to join all those who live on the sky’s back, already in very large numbers.

“The sky, which is as sick from the white people’s fumes as we are, will start moaning and begin to break apart. … It will truly be terrifying! The back of the sky bears a forest as vast as ours, and its enormous weight will brutally crush us all.”

Davi is one of the leading representatives of the 32,000 Yanomami Indians, who inhabit the frontier region between Brazil and Venezuela, and over the years he has spoken out time and again against the damage being inflicted on his people and his beloved forest.

The gift of apt expression …

He has a great knack for finding a telling word or image and, as one reads this engrossing book, it becomes clear that this skill stems in part from his personal trajectory, which means that, while maintaining the eye of an outsider, he knows ‘white’ society well.

Davi was brought up deep in the Amazon forest, but in 1967 he became an orphan at the age of 11, when his mother died in a measles epidemic, brought in by the evangelical New Tribes missionaries.

These missionaries, hell-bent on converting the Yanomami, even took advantage of the fact that the epidemic carried off far more Indians than white missionaries to drive home the superiority of their God (whom the Yanomami called Teosi, from the Portuguese Deus).

In his review of Davi’s book, the ethnobotanist Glenn H. Shepherd quotes from the diary written at the time by the missionary Keith Wardlaw (whose daughter brought the measles into the village):

“God never makes a mistake and, now that the crisis is passed, we can see how the Lord is working in hearts through the things that have happened … The power of God is at work and it is a great and marvelous thing to behold.” Indeed! – as Shepherd drily observes.

Disoriented by grief, Davi was converted, if only for a brief period. He recalls the missionaries’ treatment of his mother’s corpse: “I was never able to learn where my mother was buried. The people of Teosi never told us, so we could not gather the bones of our dead.

“Because of them, I was never able to mourn my mother the way our people usually do. It is a very bad thing. It made me feel a deep sorrow and the anger from her death has persisted in me since that time. It hardened little by little and will only end with my own end.”

The way of the shaman, the way of the campaigner

After several years he returned to the forest and went through the long and arduous process of training to become a shaman. In time, he decided to take on the role of spokesperson for his people, making journeys to Brasília and abroad in an effort to save the forest from destruction.

In one powerful passage, he describes the moment when he realised that he had to take on this role, on meeting the garimpeiros (gold prospectors) for the first time: “These fierce men appeared in the forest suddenly, coming from all over the place, and quickly encircled our houses in large numbers. They were frenetically searching for an evil thing that we had never heard about and whose name they repeated unceasingly: oru, gold.

“They started digging into the ground in every direction like herds of peccaries. They soiled the rivers with yellowish mire and filled them with xawara epidemic fumes from their machines. Then my chest filled up with anger and worry again when I saw them ravage the river’s sources with the avidity of scrawny dogs. All this to find gold, so the white people can use it to make themselves teeth and ornaments or keep it locked in their houses!

“At the time, I had just learned to defend our forest’s limits. I was not yet used to the idea that I also needed to defend its trees, game, watercourses, and fish. But I soon understood that the gold prospectors were land eaters who would destroy everything.

“These new words about protecting the forest came to me gradually, during my trips in the forest and among the white people. They settled inside me and increased little by little, linking up to each other, until they formed a long path in my mind. I used them to start speaking in the cities, even if in Portuguese my tongue still seemed as tangled as a ghost’s!”

He was on one of these journeys in June 2014 that he spoke to The Ecologist. And it was on an earlier trip that he was befriended by the French anthropologist, Bruce Albert, who became a regular visitor to his village, and ultimately his co-author.

This book is the result of over 100 hours of taped conversation, in the Yanomami language, between Davi and Albert. The serendipity of this friendship means that Davi’s rich exposition of Yanomami culture and his biting criticism of ‘white civilisation’ can now reach a broad audience.

A talent for seeing what we do not

Time and again Davi’s observations make us squirm: “The houses in the centre of this city [New York] are tall and beautiful, those on its edges are in ruins. The people who live in those places have no food and their clothes are dirty and torn. When I took a walk among them, they looked at me with sad eyes. It made me upset.

“These white people who created merchandise think they are clever and brave. Yet they are greedy and do not take care of those among them who have nothing. … They do not even look at them and are satisfied to keep their distance. And they call them ‘the poor’ [Davi uses the Portuguese word]. They even take their crumbling houses from them … It scared me to see such a thing.”

Not all of this book is easily digestible. In particular, there is a complex section at the beginning, in which Davi talks about the Yanomami’s spiritual world and the journeys he makes, flying above the forest with the xapiri (forest spirits) while under the influence of yãkoana (hallucinatory snuff). The most accessible section is Davi’s account of his personal journey.

Davi has an uncanny way of making us question the way we live, be we anthropologists in search of baskets, bow and arrows: “Why do they so often ask us for these objects? Do they want to get them in anticipation of our deaths? Will they also want to take our bones to their cities? Once dead, will we also be exhibited in the glass cases of a museum?”

Or environmental activists: “The lives of white people who hurry around all day like xiri na ants seem sad to me. They are always impatient and anxious not to get to their job [another word in Portuguese] late. They barely sleep and run all day in a haze.”

Davi believes that the world has lost its way. It is hard to disagree.

 

 

Sue Branford is an editor at Latin America Bureau. She has written five books, mainly on Brazil, including (with Jan Rocha) ‘Cutting the Wire – the Story of the Landless Movement in Brazil’. Formerly she worked at the BBC World Service as a Latin America analyst.

The book: ‘The Falling Sky – Words of a Yanomami Shaman‘ is by Davi Kopenawa and Bruce Albert, translated by Nicholas Elliott and Alison Dundy, and published by the Berknap Press of Harvard University Press 2013 [ISBN 978-0-674-72468-6].

 




390301

‘The Falling Sky’ – words of a Yanomami shaman Updated for 2026

Leave a reply




With scarcely a day going by without further bad news about declines in global flora and fauna and increases in greenhouse gas emissions, it is no longer so easy to dismiss ‘end of the world’ myths in indigenous culture as quaint relics of outmoded cultures.

Indeed many of these myths seem uncannily relevant as we move steadily closer towards environmental catastrophe.

The ‘falling sky’ in the title of this book refers to the Yanomami belief that, after the death of the last shaman, no one will be left to hold up the sky so it will collapse on top of the earth again, as in the beginning of time. Davi Kopenawa, himself a Yanomami shaman, has a clear idea of the sequence of events:

“When the white people tear dangerous minerals out of the depths of the earth, our breath becomes too short and we die very quickly … If the breath of life of all our people dies out, the forest will become empty and silent. Our ghosts will then go to join all those who live on the sky’s back, already in very large numbers.

“The sky, which is as sick from the white people’s fumes as we are, will start moaning and begin to break apart. … It will truly be terrifying! The back of the sky bears a forest as vast as ours, and its enormous weight will brutally crush us all.”

Davi is one of the leading representatives of the 32,000 Yanomami Indians, who inhabit the frontier region between Brazil and Venezuela, and over the years he has spoken out time and again against the damage being inflicted on his people and his beloved forest.

The gift of apt expression …

He has a great knack for finding a telling word or image and, as one reads this engrossing book, it becomes clear that this skill stems in part from his personal trajectory, which means that, while maintaining the eye of an outsider, he knows ‘white’ society well.

Davi was brought up deep in the Amazon forest, but in 1967 he became an orphan at the age of 11, when his mother died in a measles epidemic, brought in by the evangelical New Tribes missionaries.

These missionaries, hell-bent on converting the Yanomami, even took advantage of the fact that the epidemic carried off far more Indians than white missionaries to drive home the superiority of their God (whom the Yanomami called Teosi, from the Portuguese Deus).

In his review of Davi’s book, the ethnobotanist Glenn H. Shepherd quotes from the diary written at the time by the missionary Keith Wardlaw (whose daughter brought the measles into the village):

“God never makes a mistake and, now that the crisis is passed, we can see how the Lord is working in hearts through the things that have happened … The power of God is at work and it is a great and marvelous thing to behold.” Indeed! – as Shepherd drily observes.

Disoriented by grief, Davi was converted, if only for a brief period. He recalls the missionaries’ treatment of his mother’s corpse: “I was never able to learn where my mother was buried. The people of Teosi never told us, so we could not gather the bones of our dead.

“Because of them, I was never able to mourn my mother the way our people usually do. It is a very bad thing. It made me feel a deep sorrow and the anger from her death has persisted in me since that time. It hardened little by little and will only end with my own end.”

The way of the shaman, the way of the campaigner

After several years he returned to the forest and went through the long and arduous process of training to become a shaman. In time, he decided to take on the role of spokesperson for his people, making journeys to Brasília and abroad in an effort to save the forest from destruction.

In one powerful passage, he describes the moment when he realised that he had to take on this role, on meeting the garimpeiros (gold prospectors) for the first time: “These fierce men appeared in the forest suddenly, coming from all over the place, and quickly encircled our houses in large numbers. They were frenetically searching for an evil thing that we had never heard about and whose name they repeated unceasingly: oru, gold.

“They started digging into the ground in every direction like herds of peccaries. They soiled the rivers with yellowish mire and filled them with xawara epidemic fumes from their machines. Then my chest filled up with anger and worry again when I saw them ravage the river’s sources with the avidity of scrawny dogs. All this to find gold, so the white people can use it to make themselves teeth and ornaments or keep it locked in their houses!

“At the time, I had just learned to defend our forest’s limits. I was not yet used to the idea that I also needed to defend its trees, game, watercourses, and fish. But I soon understood that the gold prospectors were land eaters who would destroy everything.

“These new words about protecting the forest came to me gradually, during my trips in the forest and among the white people. They settled inside me and increased little by little, linking up to each other, until they formed a long path in my mind. I used them to start speaking in the cities, even if in Portuguese my tongue still seemed as tangled as a ghost’s!”

He was on one of these journeys in June 2014 that he spoke to The Ecologist. And it was on an earlier trip that he was befriended by the French anthropologist, Bruce Albert, who became a regular visitor to his village, and ultimately his co-author.

This book is the result of over 100 hours of taped conversation, in the Yanomami language, between Davi and Albert. The serendipity of this friendship means that Davi’s rich exposition of Yanomami culture and his biting criticism of ‘white civilisation’ can now reach a broad audience.

A talent for seeing what we do not

Time and again Davi’s observations make us squirm: “The houses in the centre of this city [New York] are tall and beautiful, those on its edges are in ruins. The people who live in those places have no food and their clothes are dirty and torn. When I took a walk among them, they looked at me with sad eyes. It made me upset.

“These white people who created merchandise think they are clever and brave. Yet they are greedy and do not take care of those among them who have nothing. … They do not even look at them and are satisfied to keep their distance. And they call them ‘the poor’ [Davi uses the Portuguese word]. They even take their crumbling houses from them … It scared me to see such a thing.”

Not all of this book is easily digestible. In particular, there is a complex section at the beginning, in which Davi talks about the Yanomami’s spiritual world and the journeys he makes, flying above the forest with the xapiri (forest spirits) while under the influence of yãkoana (hallucinatory snuff). The most accessible section is Davi’s account of his personal journey.

Davi has an uncanny way of making us question the way we live, be we anthropologists in search of baskets, bow and arrows: “Why do they so often ask us for these objects? Do they want to get them in anticipation of our deaths? Will they also want to take our bones to their cities? Once dead, will we also be exhibited in the glass cases of a museum?”

Or environmental activists: “The lives of white people who hurry around all day like xiri na ants seem sad to me. They are always impatient and anxious not to get to their job [another word in Portuguese] late. They barely sleep and run all day in a haze.”

Davi believes that the world has lost its way. It is hard to disagree.

 

 

Sue Branford is an editor at Latin America Bureau. She has written five books, mainly on Brazil, including (with Jan Rocha) ‘Cutting the Wire – the Story of the Landless Movement in Brazil’. Formerly she worked at the BBC World Service as a Latin America analyst.

The book: ‘The Falling Sky – Words of a Yanomami Shaman‘ is by Davi Kopenawa and Bruce Albert, translated by Nicholas Elliott and Alison Dundy, and published by the Berknap Press of Harvard University Press 2013 [ISBN 978-0-674-72468-6].

 




390301

‘The Falling Sky’ – words of a Yanomami shaman Updated for 2026

Leave a reply




With scarcely a day going by without further bad news about declines in global flora and fauna and increases in greenhouse gas emissions, it is no longer so easy to dismiss ‘end of the world’ myths in indigenous culture as quaint relics of outmoded cultures.

Indeed many of these myths seem uncannily relevant as we move steadily closer towards environmental catastrophe.

The ‘falling sky’ in the title of this book refers to the Yanomami belief that, after the death of the last shaman, no one will be left to hold up the sky so it will collapse on top of the earth again, as in the beginning of time. Davi Kopenawa, himself a Yanomami shaman, has a clear idea of the sequence of events:

“When the white people tear dangerous minerals out of the depths of the earth, our breath becomes too short and we die very quickly … If the breath of life of all our people dies out, the forest will become empty and silent. Our ghosts will then go to join all those who live on the sky’s back, already in very large numbers.

“The sky, which is as sick from the white people’s fumes as we are, will start moaning and begin to break apart. … It will truly be terrifying! The back of the sky bears a forest as vast as ours, and its enormous weight will brutally crush us all.”

Davi is one of the leading representatives of the 32,000 Yanomami Indians, who inhabit the frontier region between Brazil and Venezuela, and over the years he has spoken out time and again against the damage being inflicted on his people and his beloved forest.

The gift of apt expression …

He has a great knack for finding a telling word or image and, as one reads this engrossing book, it becomes clear that this skill stems in part from his personal trajectory, which means that, while maintaining the eye of an outsider, he knows ‘white’ society well.

Davi was brought up deep in the Amazon forest, but in 1967 he became an orphan at the age of 11, when his mother died in a measles epidemic, brought in by the evangelical New Tribes missionaries.

These missionaries, hell-bent on converting the Yanomami, even took advantage of the fact that the epidemic carried off far more Indians than white missionaries to drive home the superiority of their God (whom the Yanomami called Teosi, from the Portuguese Deus).

In his review of Davi’s book, the ethnobotanist Glenn H. Shepherd quotes from the diary written at the time by the missionary Keith Wardlaw (whose daughter brought the measles into the village):

“God never makes a mistake and, now that the crisis is passed, we can see how the Lord is working in hearts through the things that have happened … The power of God is at work and it is a great and marvelous thing to behold.” Indeed! – as Shepherd drily observes.

Disoriented by grief, Davi was converted, if only for a brief period. He recalls the missionaries’ treatment of his mother’s corpse: “I was never able to learn where my mother was buried. The people of Teosi never told us, so we could not gather the bones of our dead.

“Because of them, I was never able to mourn my mother the way our people usually do. It is a very bad thing. It made me feel a deep sorrow and the anger from her death has persisted in me since that time. It hardened little by little and will only end with my own end.”

The way of the shaman, the way of the campaigner

After several years he returned to the forest and went through the long and arduous process of training to become a shaman. In time, he decided to take on the role of spokesperson for his people, making journeys to Brasília and abroad in an effort to save the forest from destruction.

In one powerful passage, he describes the moment when he realised that he had to take on this role, on meeting the garimpeiros (gold prospectors) for the first time: “These fierce men appeared in the forest suddenly, coming from all over the place, and quickly encircled our houses in large numbers. They were frenetically searching for an evil thing that we had never heard about and whose name they repeated unceasingly: oru, gold.

“They started digging into the ground in every direction like herds of peccaries. They soiled the rivers with yellowish mire and filled them with xawara epidemic fumes from their machines. Then my chest filled up with anger and worry again when I saw them ravage the river’s sources with the avidity of scrawny dogs. All this to find gold, so the white people can use it to make themselves teeth and ornaments or keep it locked in their houses!

“At the time, I had just learned to defend our forest’s limits. I was not yet used to the idea that I also needed to defend its trees, game, watercourses, and fish. But I soon understood that the gold prospectors were land eaters who would destroy everything.

“These new words about protecting the forest came to me gradually, during my trips in the forest and among the white people. They settled inside me and increased little by little, linking up to each other, until they formed a long path in my mind. I used them to start speaking in the cities, even if in Portuguese my tongue still seemed as tangled as a ghost’s!”

He was on one of these journeys in June 2014 that he spoke to The Ecologist. And it was on an earlier trip that he was befriended by the French anthropologist, Bruce Albert, who became a regular visitor to his village, and ultimately his co-author.

This book is the result of over 100 hours of taped conversation, in the Yanomami language, between Davi and Albert. The serendipity of this friendship means that Davi’s rich exposition of Yanomami culture and his biting criticism of ‘white civilisation’ can now reach a broad audience.

A talent for seeing what we do not

Time and again Davi’s observations make us squirm: “The houses in the centre of this city [New York] are tall and beautiful, those on its edges are in ruins. The people who live in those places have no food and their clothes are dirty and torn. When I took a walk among them, they looked at me with sad eyes. It made me upset.

“These white people who created merchandise think they are clever and brave. Yet they are greedy and do not take care of those among them who have nothing. … They do not even look at them and are satisfied to keep their distance. And they call them ‘the poor’ [Davi uses the Portuguese word]. They even take their crumbling houses from them … It scared me to see such a thing.”

Not all of this book is easily digestible. In particular, there is a complex section at the beginning, in which Davi talks about the Yanomami’s spiritual world and the journeys he makes, flying above the forest with the xapiri (forest spirits) while under the influence of yãkoana (hallucinatory snuff). The most accessible section is Davi’s account of his personal journey.

Davi has an uncanny way of making us question the way we live, be we anthropologists in search of baskets, bow and arrows: “Why do they so often ask us for these objects? Do they want to get them in anticipation of our deaths? Will they also want to take our bones to their cities? Once dead, will we also be exhibited in the glass cases of a museum?”

Or environmental activists: “The lives of white people who hurry around all day like xiri na ants seem sad to me. They are always impatient and anxious not to get to their job [another word in Portuguese] late. They barely sleep and run all day in a haze.”

Davi believes that the world has lost its way. It is hard to disagree.

 

 

Sue Branford is an editor at Latin America Bureau. She has written five books, mainly on Brazil, including (with Jan Rocha) ‘Cutting the Wire – the Story of the Landless Movement in Brazil’. Formerly she worked at the BBC World Service as a Latin America analyst.

The book: ‘The Falling Sky – Words of a Yanomami Shaman‘ is by Davi Kopenawa and Bruce Albert, translated by Nicholas Elliott and Alison Dundy, and published by the Berknap Press of Harvard University Press 2013 [ISBN 978-0-674-72468-6].

 




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‘The Falling Sky’ – words of a Yanomami shaman Updated for 2026

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With scarcely a day going by without further bad news about declines in global flora and fauna and increases in greenhouse gas emissions, it is no longer so easy to dismiss ‘end of the world’ myths in indigenous culture as quaint relics of outmoded cultures.

Indeed many of these myths seem uncannily relevant as we move steadily closer towards environmental catastrophe.

The ‘falling sky’ in the title of this book refers to the Yanomami belief that, after the death of the last shaman, no one will be left to hold up the sky so it will collapse on top of the earth again, as in the beginning of time. Davi Kopenawa, himself a Yanomami shaman, has a clear idea of the sequence of events:

“When the white people tear dangerous minerals out of the depths of the earth, our breath becomes too short and we die very quickly … If the breath of life of all our people dies out, the forest will become empty and silent. Our ghosts will then go to join all those who live on the sky’s back, already in very large numbers.

“The sky, which is as sick from the white people’s fumes as we are, will start moaning and begin to break apart. … It will truly be terrifying! The back of the sky bears a forest as vast as ours, and its enormous weight will brutally crush us all.”

Davi is one of the leading representatives of the 32,000 Yanomami Indians, who inhabit the frontier region between Brazil and Venezuela, and over the years he has spoken out time and again against the damage being inflicted on his people and his beloved forest.

The gift of apt expression …

He has a great knack for finding a telling word or image and, as one reads this engrossing book, it becomes clear that this skill stems in part from his personal trajectory, which means that, while maintaining the eye of an outsider, he knows ‘white’ society well.

Davi was brought up deep in the Amazon forest, but in 1967 he became an orphan at the age of 11, when his mother died in a measles epidemic, brought in by the evangelical New Tribes missionaries.

These missionaries, hell-bent on converting the Yanomami, even took advantage of the fact that the epidemic carried off far more Indians than white missionaries to drive home the superiority of their God (whom the Yanomami called Teosi, from the Portuguese Deus).

In his review of Davi’s book, the ethnobotanist Glenn H. Shepherd quotes from the diary written at the time by the missionary Keith Wardlaw (whose daughter brought the measles into the village):

“God never makes a mistake and, now that the crisis is passed, we can see how the Lord is working in hearts through the things that have happened … The power of God is at work and it is a great and marvelous thing to behold.” Indeed! – as Shepherd drily observes.

Disoriented by grief, Davi was converted, if only for a brief period. He recalls the missionaries’ treatment of his mother’s corpse: “I was never able to learn where my mother was buried. The people of Teosi never told us, so we could not gather the bones of our dead.

“Because of them, I was never able to mourn my mother the way our people usually do. It is a very bad thing. It made me feel a deep sorrow and the anger from her death has persisted in me since that time. It hardened little by little and will only end with my own end.”

The way of the shaman, the way of the campaigner

After several years he returned to the forest and went through the long and arduous process of training to become a shaman. In time, he decided to take on the role of spokesperson for his people, making journeys to Brasília and abroad in an effort to save the forest from destruction.

In one powerful passage, he describes the moment when he realised that he had to take on this role, on meeting the garimpeiros (gold prospectors) for the first time: “These fierce men appeared in the forest suddenly, coming from all over the place, and quickly encircled our houses in large numbers. They were frenetically searching for an evil thing that we had never heard about and whose name they repeated unceasingly: oru, gold.

“They started digging into the ground in every direction like herds of peccaries. They soiled the rivers with yellowish mire and filled them with xawara epidemic fumes from their machines. Then my chest filled up with anger and worry again when I saw them ravage the river’s sources with the avidity of scrawny dogs. All this to find gold, so the white people can use it to make themselves teeth and ornaments or keep it locked in their houses!

“At the time, I had just learned to defend our forest’s limits. I was not yet used to the idea that I also needed to defend its trees, game, watercourses, and fish. But I soon understood that the gold prospectors were land eaters who would destroy everything.

“These new words about protecting the forest came to me gradually, during my trips in the forest and among the white people. They settled inside me and increased little by little, linking up to each other, until they formed a long path in my mind. I used them to start speaking in the cities, even if in Portuguese my tongue still seemed as tangled as a ghost’s!”

He was on one of these journeys in June 2014 that he spoke to The Ecologist. And it was on an earlier trip that he was befriended by the French anthropologist, Bruce Albert, who became a regular visitor to his village, and ultimately his co-author.

This book is the result of over 100 hours of taped conversation, in the Yanomami language, between Davi and Albert. The serendipity of this friendship means that Davi’s rich exposition of Yanomami culture and his biting criticism of ‘white civilisation’ can now reach a broad audience.

A talent for seeing what we do not

Time and again Davi’s observations make us squirm: “The houses in the centre of this city [New York] are tall and beautiful, those on its edges are in ruins. The people who live in those places have no food and their clothes are dirty and torn. When I took a walk among them, they looked at me with sad eyes. It made me upset.

“These white people who created merchandise think they are clever and brave. Yet they are greedy and do not take care of those among them who have nothing. … They do not even look at them and are satisfied to keep their distance. And they call them ‘the poor’ [Davi uses the Portuguese word]. They even take their crumbling houses from them … It scared me to see such a thing.”

Not all of this book is easily digestible. In particular, there is a complex section at the beginning, in which Davi talks about the Yanomami’s spiritual world and the journeys he makes, flying above the forest with the xapiri (forest spirits) while under the influence of yãkoana (hallucinatory snuff). The most accessible section is Davi’s account of his personal journey.

Davi has an uncanny way of making us question the way we live, be we anthropologists in search of baskets, bow and arrows: “Why do they so often ask us for these objects? Do they want to get them in anticipation of our deaths? Will they also want to take our bones to their cities? Once dead, will we also be exhibited in the glass cases of a museum?”

Or environmental activists: “The lives of white people who hurry around all day like xiri na ants seem sad to me. They are always impatient and anxious not to get to their job [another word in Portuguese] late. They barely sleep and run all day in a haze.”

Davi believes that the world has lost its way. It is hard to disagree.

 

 

Sue Branford is an editor at Latin America Bureau. She has written five books, mainly on Brazil, including (with Jan Rocha) ‘Cutting the Wire – the Story of the Landless Movement in Brazil’. Formerly she worked at the BBC World Service as a Latin America analyst.

The book: ‘The Falling Sky – Words of a Yanomami Shaman‘ is by Davi Kopenawa and Bruce Albert, translated by Nicholas Elliott and Alison Dundy, and published by the Berknap Press of Harvard University Press 2013 [ISBN 978-0-674-72468-6].

 




390301

Ethiopia: stealing the Omo Valley, destroying its ancient Peoples Updated for 2026

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There is growing international concern for the future of the lower Omo Valley in Ethiopia. A beautiful, biologically diverse land with volcanic outcrops and a pristine riverine forest; it is also a UNESCO world heritage site, yielding significant archaeological finds, including human remains dating back 2.4 million years.

The Valley is one of the most culturally diverse places in the world, with around200,000 indigenous people living there. Yet, in blind attempts to modernise and develop what the government sees as an area of ‘backward’ farmers in need of modernisation, some of Ethiopia’s most valuable landscapes, resources and communities are being destroyed.

A new dam, called Gibe III, on the Omo River is nearing completion and will begin operation in June, 2015, potentially devastating the lives of half a million people. Along with the dam, extensive land grabbing is forcing thousands from their ancestral homes and destroying ecosystems.

Ethiopia’s ‘villagisation’ programme is aiding the land-grab by pushing tribes into purpose built villages where they can no longer access their lands, becoming unable to sustain themselves, and making these previously self-sufficient tribes dependent on government food aid.

A total disregard for the rights of Ethiopia’s Indigenous Peoples

What is happening in the lower Omo Valley, and elsewhere, shows a complete disregard for human rights and a total failure to understand the value these tribes offer Ethiopia in terms of their cultural heritage and their contribution to food security.

There are eight tribes living in the Valley, including the Mursi, famous for wearing large plates in their lower lips. Their agricultural practices have been developed over generations to cope with Ethiopia’s famously dry climate.

Many are herders who keep cattle, sheep and goats and live nomadically. Others practice small-scale shifting cultivation, whilst many depend on the fertile crop and pasture land created by seasonal flooding.

The vital life source of the Omo River is being cut off by Gibe III. An Italian construction company began work in 2006, violating Ethiopian law as there was no competitive bidding for the contract and no meaningful consultation with indigenous people.

The dam has received investment from the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and the World Bank, and the hydropower is primarily going for export rather than domestic use – despite the fact that 77% of Ethiopia’s population lacks access to electricity.

People in the Omo Valley are politically vulnerable and geographically remote. Many do not speak Amharic, the national language, and have no access to resources or information. Foreign journalists have been denied contact with the tribes, as BBC reporter Matthew Newsome recently discovered when he was prevented from speaking to the Mursi people.

There has been little consideration of potential impacts, including those which may affect other countries, particularly Kenya, as Lake Turkana relies heavily on the Omo River.

At risk: Lake Turkana, ‘Cradle of Mankind’

Lake Turkana, known as the ‘Cradle of Mankind’, is the world’s largest desert lake dating back more than 4 million years. 90% of its inflow comes from the Omo. Filling of the lake behind the dam will take three years and use up to a years’ worth of inflow that would otherwise go into Lake Turkana.

Irrigation projects linked with the dam will then reduce the inflow by 50% and lead to a drop of up to 20 metres in the lake’s depth. These projects may also pollute the water with chemicals and nitrogen run-off. Dr Sean Avery’s report explains how this could devastate the lake’s ancient ecosystems and affect the 300,000 people who depend on it for their livelihoods.

Tribal communities living around the lake rely on it for fish, as well as an emergency source of water. It also attracts other wildlife which some tribes hunt for food, such as the El Molo, who hunt hippo and crocodile. Turkana is home to at least 60 fish species, which have evolved to be perfectly adapted to the lake’s environment.

Breeding activity is highest when the Omo floods, and this seasonal flood also stimulates the migration of spawning fish. Flooding is vital for diluting the salinity of the lake, making it habitable. Livestock around the lake add nutrients to the soil encouraging shoreline vegetation, and this is important for protecting young fish during the floods.

Lake Turkana is a fragile ecosystem, highly dependent on regular seasonal activity, particularly from the Omo. To alter this ancient ebb and flow will throw the environment out of balance and impact all life which relies on the lake.

Severely restricted resources around the lake may also lead to violence amongst those competing for what’s left. Low water levels could see the lake split in two, similar to the Aral Sea. Having acted as a natural boundary between people, there is concern that conflict will be inevitable.

Fear is already spreading amongst the tribes who say they are afraid of those who live on the other side of the lake. One woman said, “They will come and kill us and that will bring about enmity among us as we turn on each other due to hunger.”

Conflict may also come from Ethiopians moving into Kenyan territory in attempts to find new land and resources.

A land grab twice the size of France

The dam is part of a wider attempt to develop the Omo Valley resulting in land grabs and plantations depending on large-scale irrigation. Since 2008 an area the size of France has been given to foreign companies, and there are plans to hand over twice this area of land over the next few years.

Investors can grow what they want and sell where they want. The main crops being brought into cultivation include, sugar, cotton, maize, palm oil and biofuels. These have no benefit to local economies, and rather than using Ethiopia’s fragile fertile lands to support its own people, the crops grown here are exported for foreign markets.

Despite claims that plantations will bring jobs, most of the workers are migrants. Where local people (including children) are employed, they are paid extremely poorly. 750km of internal roads are also being constructed to serve the plantations, and are carving up the landscape, causing further evictions.

In order to prepare the land for plantations, all trees and grassland are cleared, destroying valuable ecosystems and natural resources.

Reports claim the military have been regularly intimidating villages, stealing and killing cattle and destroying grain stores. There have also been reports of beatings, rape and even deaths, whilst those who oppose the developments are put in jail. The Bodi, Kwegi and Mursi people were evicted to make way for the Kuraz Sugar Project which covers 245,000 acres.

The Suri have also been forcibly removed to make way for the Koka palm oil plantation, run by a Malaysian company and covering 76,600 acres. This is also happening elsewhere in Ethiopia, particularly the Gambela region where 73% of the indigenous population are destined for resettlement.

Al-Moudi, a Saudi tycoon, has 10,000 acres in this region to grow rice, which is exported to the Middle East. A recent report from the World Bank’s internal watchdog has accused a UK and World Bank funded development programme of contributing to this violent resettlement.

For many tribes in the Omo Valley, the loss of their land means the loss of their culture. Cattle herding is not just a source of income, it defines people’s lives. There is great cultural value placed on the animals. The Bodi are known to sing poems to their favourite cattle; and there are many rituals involving the livestock, such as the Hamer tribe’s coming of age ceremony whereby young men must jump across a line of 10 to 30 bulls.

Losing their land also means losing the ability to sustain themselves. As Ulijarholi, a member of the Mursi tribe, said, “If our land is taken, it is like taking our lives.”

They will no longer be independent but must rely on government food aid or try to grow food from tiny areas of land with severely reduced resources.

Ethiopia’s food security

Ethiopia is currently experiencing economic growth, yet 30 million people still face chronic food shortages. Some 90% of Ethiopia’s national budget is foreign aid, but instead of taking a grass-roots approach to securing a self-sufficient food supply for its people, it is being pushed aggressively towards industrial development and intensive production for foreign markets.

There is a failure to recognise what these indigenous small-scale farmers and pastoralists offer to Ethiopia’s food security. Survival of the Fittest, a report by Oxfam, argued that pastoralism is one of the best ways to combat climate change because of its flexibility.

During droughts animals can be slaughtered and resources focused on a core breeding stock in order to survive. This provides insurance against crop failure as livestock can be exchanged for grain or sold, but when crops fail there can be nothing left. Tribal people can also live off the meat and milk of their animals.

Those who have long cultivated the land in the Omo Valley are essential to the region’s food security, producing sorghum, maize and beans on the flood plains. This requires long experience of the local climate and the river’s seasonal behaviour, as well as knowledge of which crops grow well under diverse and challenging conditions.

Support for smallholders and pastoralists could improve their efficiency and access to local markets. This would be a sustainable system which preserved soil fertility and the local ecosystem through small-scale mixed rotation cropping, appropriate use of scarce resources (by growing crops which don’t need lots of water, for example) and use of livestock for fertility-building, as well as for producing food on less productive lands.

Instead, over a billion dollars is being spent on hydro-electric power and irrigation projects. This will ultimately prove unsustainable, since large-scale crop irrigation in dry regions causes water depletion and salinisation of the soil, turning the land unproductive within a couple of generations.

Short of an international outcry however, the traditional agricultural practices of the indigenous people will be long gone by the time the disastrous consequences becomes apparent.

 

 

Megan Perry is Personal and Research Assistant to SFT Policy Director, Richard Young.

This article was originally published byt the Sustainable Food Trust.

Also on The Ecologist:

 




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Victory in prospect for Peru’s Kichwa People after 40 years of oil pollution Updated for 2026

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Hundreds of of Kichwa indigenous people living along the River Tigre in the remote Peruvian Amazon are demanding over 100 million Peruvian nuevo soles ($32 million / £21 million) from oil company Pluspetrol in the “environmental damages” they have sustained over 40 years of oil drilling.

The Kichwa men, women and children blockaded the River Tigre for most of January with two cables – stopping two boats contracted by Pluspetrol to carry equipment, materials and supplies upriver to oil dilling sites.

The blockade was only suspended last Friday after Fernando Melendez Celis, President of the vast Amazonian region of Loreto, paid a visit to the protesters, camped by the side of the river on land belonging to Kichwa community Nuevo Remanente.

“Loreto now has a president that will fight for your rights”, Melendez Celis told the Kichwas. “I’m here to tell you the regional government will fight for you. These territories belong to you.”

The blockade is the latest manifestation of a new militancy among the indigenous peoples of the Peruvian Amazon. Last December the Matsés people whose territory straddles Peru’s border with Amazonas, Brazil threatened at attack any oil workers entering their lands.

Oil pollution an ‘environmental emergency’

Pluspetrol’s concession, Lot 1-AB, is Peru’s number one oil producer. Operated in partnership with PetroChina, it yielded almost 25% of all Peruvian oil in 2013.

But operations there have led to severe contamination leading the government to declare an “environmental emergency” in the river Tigre basin in late 2013. Water samples from the Tigre and its tributaries revealed dangerous levels of lead, nickel, iron and aluminium – leaving local communities no water fit for human consumption.

The Kichwas are also demanding compensation for land use, environmental clean-up, and to be consulted by the government about the concession contract which expires this August, among other things.

Numerous Kichwas say that the Tigre and other water sources are contaminated, meaning that they, as well as the game and fish they depend on to survive, are slowly being poisoned.

“Our fathers and our in-laws are dying”, said Edinson Munoz Moscoso, from Remanente. “We, the survivors, are fighting for the benefit of our sons and daughters.”

“There have been 45 years of contamination”, said David Inuma Sabaleta. “The Kichwas, the agoutis, the tapirs, the water … all poisoned. Our fathers and grand-fathers have died because of this.”

“We use the water for everything: to drink, to wash, to cook”, said Orlando Chuje Aranda, another Remanente resident. “It’s contaminated, but we have to use it because there’s no other option.”

“After 45 years of oil operations, we want to be able to drink water that isn’t contaminated”, said Carlos Huaya Luna, from the Vista Alegre community. “Here, we’re fucked. Boys, girls, women … how many people have had to suffer for us to reach this point? That’s why we’re protesting.”

Pluspetrol and Peruvian government forced to negotiate

The blockade was suspended after Melendez Celis agreed to broker a meeting in the nearest city, Iquitos, between Kichwa leaders, Pluspetrol, and the central government’s Council of Ministers (PCM).

And on the same day that Melendez Celis set off for Remanente, Peru’s Energy Minister said the government will invest 100 million soles in the Tigre and other rivers where environmental emergencies have been declared.

Calls were made by satellite phone to Pluspetrol and the PCM in Lima, and Melendez Celis committed to attempt to ensure that Peru’s Prime Minister Ana Jara would participate in the meeting too.

A PCM representative present in Remanente at the same time made various proposals to the Kichwas, including 3.5 million nuevo soles for land-titling, but they insisted on dealing with higher-level personnel.

“We don’t want a speech”, Fernando Chuje Ruiz, the newly-elected president of Kichwa federation FECONAT told the PCM representative, Jose Antonio Caro. “What we want is Ana Jara to be here.”

Melendez Celis, whose term as President of Loreto started last month, told The Ecologist the contamination made him feel like a “Kichwa brother”, that he is “assuming their fight” and will “protect them and their rights.”

“The state has been indolent”, he continued. “It has punished its indigenous peoples and forgotten them. No longer. My dream for Loreto is that policies are much more just.”

Melendez Celis also committed to ensuring more oil revenues are invested in the Tigre region, and to paying for studies estimating the financial value of the environmental damage.

If our demands are not met, the blockade continues!

FECONAT issued a statement last week laying out various demands, and stressing that compensation and consultation are rights recognised by law. “For the first time in our history the Kichwa people has risen up in defence of our rights“, the statement reads. “We’re with our families fighting to be heard.”

According to the statement Pluspetrol and Occidental, which operated Lot 1-AB from the early 1970s until 2000, have destroyed Kichwa lands and committed “genocide” while “the state has never defended us …

“We want to make it clear we are not against development or oil operations. But nor are we going to allow ourselves to be made extinct in the name of development.”

The meeting between the Kichwas, Pluspetrol and the PCM was initially scheduled for yesterday, but according to Melendez’s media officer, Leonardo Caballero, it will take place this week, “possibly Wednesday.”

The Kichwa protests are “unprecedented”, said Jorge Tacuri, a lawyer acting for the Kichwas, who accompanied Melendez Celis to Remanente. “Never have the Kichwas protested as they’re doing now. They’ve put the Tigre on the national and international agenda. The central government has agreed to sit down with them.”

Tacuri points out that the suspension of the protest may only be temporary, depending on the outcome of today’s meeting, adding that the Kichwas’ camp at ‘Base Tigre’, an old oil operations base, is built to last: “They brought all their stuff to live there. They weren’t joking when they said they would protest for a year.”

 

 

David Hill is a freelance journalist and environment writer based in Latin America, writing for the Guardian, The Ecologist and other publications. For more details see his website: www.hilldavid.com or follow him on Twitter: @DavidHillTweets 

 




390049

Victory in prospect for Peru’s Kichwa People after 40 years of oil pollution Updated for 2026

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Hundreds of of Kichwa Indians living along the River Tigre in the remote Peruvian Amazon are demanding over 100 million Peruvian nuevo soles ($32 million / £21 million) from oil company Pluspetrol in the “environmental damages” they have sustained over 40 years of oil drilling.

The Kichwa men, women and children have blockaded the River Tigre for most of January with two cables – stopping two boats contracted by Pluspetrol to carry equipment, materials and supplies upriver to oil dilling sites.

The blockade was suspended on Friday after Fernando Melendez Celis, President of the vast Amazonian region of Loreto, paid a visit to the protesters, camped by the side of the river on land belonging to Kichwa community Nuevo Remanente.

“Loreto now has a president that will fight for your rights”, Melendez Celis told the Kichwas. “I’m here to tell you the regional government will fight for you. These territories belong to you.”

The blockade is the latest manifestation of a new militancy among the indigenous peoples of the Peruvian Amazon. Last December the Matsé people whose territory straddles Peru’s border with Acre, Brazil threatened at attack any oil workers entering their lands.

Oil pollution an ‘environmental emergency’

Pluspetrol’s concession, Lot 1-AB, is Peru’s number one oil producer. Operated in partnership with PetroChina, it yielded almost 25% of all Peruvian oil in 2013.

But operations there have led to severe contamination leading the government to declare an “environmental emergency” in the river Tigre basin in late 2013. Water samples from the Tigre and its tributaries revealed dangerous levels of lead, nickel, iron and aluminium – leaving local communities no water fit for human consumption.

The Kichwas are also demanding compensation for land use, environmental clean-up, and to be consulted by the government about the concession contract which expires this August, among other things.

Numerous Kichwas say that the Tigre and other water sources are contaminated, meaning that they, as well as the game and fish they depend on to survive, are slowly being poisoned.

“Our fathers and our in-laws are dying”, said Edinson Munoz Moscoso, from Remanente. “We, the survivors, are fighting for the benefit of our sons and daughters.”

“There have been 45 years of contamination”, said David Inuma Sabaleta. “The Kichwas, the agoutis, the tapirs, the water … all poisoned. Our fathers and grand-fathers have died because of this.”

“We use the water for everything: to drink, to wash, to cook”, said Orlando Chuje Aranda, another Remanente resident. “It’s contaminated, but we have to use it because there’s no other option.”

“After 45 years of oil operations, we want to be able to drink water that isn’t contaminated”, said Carlos Huaya Luna, from the Vista Alegre community. “Here, we’re fucked. Boys, girls, women … how many people have had to suffer for us to reach this point? That’s why we’re protesting.”

Pluspetrol and Peruvian government forced to negotiate

The blockade was suspended after Melendez Celis agreed to broker a meeting in the nearest city, Iquitos, between Kichwa leaders, Pluspetrol, and the central government’s Council of Ministers (PCM).

And on the same day that Melendez Celis set off for Remanente, Peru’s Energy Minister said the government will invest 100 million soles in the Tigre and other rivers where environmental emergencies have been declared.

Calls were made by satellite phone to Pluspetrol and the PCM in Lima, and Melendez Celis committed to attempt to ensure that Peru’s Prime Minister Ana Jara would participate in the meeting too.

A PCM representative present in Remanente at the same time made various proposals to the Kichwas, including 3.5 million nuevo soles for land-titling, but they insisted on dealing with higher-level personnel.

“We don’t want a speech”, Fernando Chuje Ruiz, the newly-elected president of Kichwa federation FECONAT told the PCM representative, Jose Antonio Caro. “What we want is Ana Jara to be here.”

Melendez Celis, whose term as President of Loreto started last month, told The Ecologist the contamination made him feel like a “Kichwa brother”, that he is “assuming their fight” and will “protect them and their rights.”

“The state has been indolent”, he continued. “It has punished its indigenous peoples and forgotten them. No longer. My dream for Loreto is that policies are much more just.”

Melendez Celis also committed to ensuring more oil revenues are invested in the Tigre region, and to paying for studies estimating the financial value of the environmental damage.

If our demands are not met, the blockade continues!

FECONAT issued a statement last week laying out various demands, and stressing that compensation and consultation are rights recognised by law. “For the first time in our history the Kichwa people has risen up in defence of our rights“, the statement reads. “We’re with our families fighting to be heard.”

According to the statement Pluspetrol and Occidental, which operated Lot 1-AB from the early 1970s until 2000, have destroyed Kichwa lands and committed “genocide” while “the state has never defended us …

“We want to make it clear we are not against development or oil operations. But nor are we going to allow ourselves to be made extinct in the name of development.”

The meeting between the Kichwas, Pluspetrol and the PCM was initially scheduled for yesterday, but according to Melendez’s media officer, Leonardo Caballero, it will take place this week, “possibly Wednesday.”

The Kichwa protests are “unprecedented”, said Jorge Tacuri, a lawyer acting for the Kichwas, who accompanied Melendez Celis to Remanente. “Never have the Kichwas protested as they’re doing now. They’ve put the Tigre on the national and international agenda. The central government has agreed to sit down with them.”

Tacuri points out that the suspension of the protest may only be temporary, depending on the outcome of today’s meeting, adding that the Kichwas’ camp at ‘Base Tigre’, an old oil operations base, is built to last: “They brought all their stuff to live there. They weren’t joking when they said they would protest for a year.”

 

 

David Hill is a freelance journalist and environment writer based in Latin America, writing for the Guardian, The Ecologist and other publications. For more details see his website: www.hilldavid.com or follow him on Twitter: @DavidHillTweets 

 




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