Fire is latest calamity to hit Amazon Indians
Story-Date: 02:46 a.m. PST Sunday   , April 12, 1998

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Fire is latest calamity to hit Amazon Indians
Encroachment of white settlers threatens tribe
WASHINGTON POST

YANOMAMI INDIAN RESERVATION, BRAZIL When the smoke penetrated this
sweltering jungle reservation two months ago, the shamans of the Yanomami,
the largest recently discovered Indian tribe in the Americas, immediately
recognized it as the ancient sign of Armageddon.

Though terrifying, the choking clouds were quite logical: The "white men"
were at it again, they believed, and this time, the Earth had simply had
enough.

"The ground has been disturbed, and when that happens, the legend says a
great smoke comes and hell is close," said Davi Kopenawa Yanomami, a
celebrated protector of his tribe, referring to last week's record fires in
the northern Amazon started by the slash-and-burn agriculture of
encroaching Brazilian settlers. The fires, most of which were doused late
last month by long-awaited rains, were worsened into the region's
conflagration of the century by a severe drought caused by El Nino and a
lack of response by Brazilian officials.

As the flames dissipate, leaving charred swaths the size of Lebanon behind,
there appears to be truth to those Yanomami legends. Medical and Indian
experts say the effect of the fires on this tribe -- 9,500 hunters and
gatherers who are the subjects of an international campaign to preserve
their ancient culture -- could be devastating, bringing famine and disease
to people who already have faced wave after wave of calamities since their
contact with modern civilization in the 1970s.

The tribe has been plagued by settlers encroaching on their jungle world
and, worse, by legions of miners who have entered the heart of their
reservation illegally, bringing epidemics of measles, malaria, tuberculosis
and venereal diseases to a people who have little natural resistance to
those sicknesses. As recently as 1993, miners who continue to dig up the
"sacred earth" here that harbors untold wealth in gold, uranium and
diamonds, massacred 20 Indians.

Yet, inside its 40,000-square-mile reservation in extreme northern Brazil,
the ancient customs and traditions of the Yanomami have survived the
numerous assaults.

The women wear only their traditional garb of bright-red loincloths with
blades of grass stuck through various piercings in their jaws. And while
some of the men who have had continuous contact with Western visitors wear
shorts, many go mostly naked, wearing just face paint, and strings of
jungle vines around their waists. Members of the tribe hunt with bows,
arrows and spears, and use primitive metal tools to cultivate their tiny
orchards.

In Demini, about 200 miles from Boa Vista, the capital of the northern
state of Roraima, villagers live in a maloca, a large, round communal hut
with an open-air center and thatched sides where the Yanomami sleep in
skillfully woven hammocks.

Although programs that once granted free Amazon land to settlers have been
more or less abandoned, there is little political will in Brazil to protect
the rights of the few remaining Indians as settlers continue their
northward march.

"International pressure has forced Brazil to write 20th century laws in the
constitution that protect Indians, but the problem is that we have 19th
century enforcement . . . meaning almost none at all," said Bruce Albert, a
French anthropologist based in Sao Paulo who advises the Pro-Yanomami
Committee, an Indian defense group. "What you have is the Wild West all
over again."

Much of the game the Yanomami hunt, such as tapirs and wild boar, has fled
the region to escape the smoke and fires. Drought, smoke and flames have
dried up rivers, killed fruit trees and shriveled their tiny manioc and
banana groves.

"I am terribly worried about their future -- about how they are going to
survive" the aftermath, said Matthieu Lena, administrator of the
Paris-based group Doctors of the World. "What are these people going to
eat? Their problems are only beginning."

As devastating as the fires have been, it is disease brought by the miners
and settlers that has been the Yanomamis' biggest problem. Over the past
three decades, entire Yanomami villages have been killed off by malaria.
Although international medical groups are treating the Indians, the problem
rages out of control. In the first three months of 1998, there were 1,226
reported new cases of malaria, a 40 percent increase over the same period
last year, according to the Pro-Yanomami Committee.

Disease has given the tribe one of the highest infant mortality rates in
the hemisphere -- 161 of 1,000 Yanomami babies die at birth, more than
three times the national rate in Brazil and 24 times the rate in the United
States. There are 12 percent fewer Yanomami today than there were in 1989
despite a 3 percent growth rate. In other words -- the tribe has seen many
births, but many, many more deaths.

It is the fault of "you white people," as the Yanomami refer to all
non-Indians, regardless of race or nationality, said an emotional Fatima
Yanomami, wife of Kopenawa, the shaman in Demini, a village of 104 people,
who has been recognized by the United Nations for his efforts to preserve
his tribe's culture. "I am scared for my children! And you are guilty of
all of it, the fires, of the (calamities). You are big people. You could
stop it all if you wanted to, but you don't. You don't want to stop it and
leave us alone."

When smoke from the major Amazon fires first crept into this village,
Kopenawa felt the obligation to pass down the oral tradition of the
historical significance of death to his children. In translated accounts of
the legends, it is said "when the sacred places of the Earth are disturbed,
the night will come like the morning breeze, because the Yanomami spirit
will be growing weak. Night will come like the wind because I will be
dying."

But Kopenawa is confident the tribe's spiritual energy is strong enough to
keep Armageddon at bay. Indeed, despite a last-minute international effort
by firefighters to put out the Amazon flames, they were ultimately doused
by rains -- which came, coincidence or not -- after Yanomami shamans
combined forces to stage a powerful rain-making ceremony.

"We are a strong people still," asserted Kopenawa. "We have great spiritual
energy, and great power. We will not be destroyed."

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