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A People at Risk, Part One: The Yanomami of Brazil
| Article
# : |
19542 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
Date : |
11 / 1991 |
2,774 Words |
| Author
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Peter Gorman
Peter Gorman, a free-lance writer and collector for the
American Museum of Natural History, has researched and
written
extensively about the peoples of the Amazon. |
The spiritual beliefs of the Yanomami Indians of northern Amazonia are based on a worldview in which spirits exist not only in plants, animals, and humans, but in two parallel universes located above and below the world. Those spirits who inhabit the upper world assist their creator, Omam, in keeping the world abundant so that the Yanomami may have fruitful lives; those who inhabit the lower world are vengeful and do little but bring illness and trouble to the Yanomami. To undo the trouble caused by the evil spirits, the Yanomami depend upon their shamans, tribal medicine men who not only understand the uses of medicinal plants but can call on the helpful spirits of the natural world to aid in the daily struggle to keep their universe in balance by keeping the vengeful spirits in check.
That worldview, like all aspects of Yanomami culture, grows out of their intimate relationship with the earth and all things in it. Just how complex and important that relationship is to the Yanomami is made abundantly clear in their creation myth: The Yanomami not only witnessed the birth of the earth, they evolved with it. Their allies are the birds and animals; their garden the forest; the game they eat, their animal ancestors; and their demons, the spirits who have no land on which to hunt.
But in recent years that relationship has been put at great risk. During the early 1970s, Brazil's then-military government began to build a series of roads through Amazonia to open up the forest for settlement. This encroachment into Yanomami lands set into motion a series of events that today threatens the Yanomami's continued existence.
Cultural clash
One of those roads, the Perimetral Norte, built in 1983, was designed to run along Brazil's northern border, cutting through the heart of Yanomami territory. Although the Perimetral Norte was never completed, reports from Survival International, an organization that works for the rights of indigenous peoples worldwide, say that "the preliminary works were enough to introduce a series of diseases--flu, measles, malaria--to the thirteen villages of the region. The communities were decimated by the epidemics, with a 90 percent loss of life in some places."
Even worse for the Yanomami, as part of the road buildings scheme, Brazil's government, under the leadership of then-President Jose Sarney, also began the first aerial surveys of remote Amazonia. Those surveys done in the north revealed that the Yanomami
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