2010/08/02

yanomami ritual

yanomami ritual, Brazil
Copyright © Tatiana Cardeal. All rights reserved.
Reprodução proibida. © Todos os direitos reservados.


For the Yanomami, urihi, the forest-land, is not a mere inert space for economic exploration (of what we call 'nature'). It is a living entity, part of a complex cosmological dynamic of exchanges between humans and non-humans. As such, it today finds itself threatened by the reckless predation of whites. In the view of their leader:
"The forest-land will only die if it is destroyed by whites. Then, the creeks will disappear, the land will crumble, the trees will dry and the stones of the mountains will shatter under the heat. The xapiripë spirits who live in the mountain ranges and play in the forest will eventually flee. Their fathers, the shamans, will not be able to summon them to protect us. The forest-land will become dry and empty. The shamans will no longer be able to deter the smoke-epidemics and the malefic beings who make us ill. And so everyone will die."

Davi Kopenawa Yanomami
Information by: ISA
>> photo of Yanomami shamans at the Indigenous National Festival, Bertioga, Brazil.

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Instituto Socioambiental: Saúde Indígena