To ensure the Amazon's survival is to ensure the world's.
The lung of our world is in danger
Amazon people are full of knowledge, unique languages and their own cultural identity. Many have a history of battling rubber barons, miners and oil prospectors wanting to destroy their homes and others have perished from missionary intervention, diseases and genocide. These people have made an otherwise inhospitable place home by learning the patterns and remembering the species of the rainforest. Now they are the rainforest’s last line of defense from the greed of the ‘civilised’ world.
"When you take away a man's land, you take away his life spirit"
The Amazon is home to more than 30 million people, including 350 indigenous and ethnic groups,live in it. These people depend on the natural resources that are available in abundant amount for agriculture, clothing and traditional medicines.
They are divided into about 400 tribes, each with its own language, culture and territory, some of which have never been contacted by the "outside world".
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Yanomami
these people can teach us a lot about the rainforest. Their knowledge of medicinal plants used for treating illness is unmatched, and they have a great understanding of the ecology of the Amazon rainforest.
Life in the Rainforest
The Amazon is home to tribal people who rely on their surroundings for food, shelter, and medicines. Today very few people live in traditional ways as most have been displaced by outside settlers or have been forced to give up their lifestyles by governments. Most people live in settled villages by the rivers, but all residents depend on the Amazon’s bountiful supply of resources for food, shelter and livelihoods. Only a few Amazonian tribes are nomadic; they tend to live deep in the forest away from the rivers.
Most tribes grow vegetables and fruits like manioc, corn, beans and bananas.
They also hunt and fish, using plant-based poisons to stun the fish. Some tribes use shotguns for hunting, others use bows and arrows, spears, or blowguns with darts tipped with curare. But the nomadic tribes typically rely on hunting and gathering to survive rather than growing crops.
Usually tribal people don’t ever go to school like us, instead they learn about the forest areas from their ancestors and few people in their communities. They learn about hunting, fishing and they also learn about the medicines available in those forest areas and how they must be used.
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Spiritual and Religious Beliefs
The spiritual world is extremely important to the indigenous people of Amazon. It is a world they claim to get closer to by utilizing plants that contain certain hallucinogens.
One of the most important persons to many indigenous groups is the shaman, who holds the knowledge of local plants and animals, and who is believed to communicate with the spirit world. Shamans use the power of the spirits to heal members of the tribe and to call for harm to befall enemies.
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The majority of Amazon cultures practice some form of animism. This belief system sees the rainforest as the home of spiritual life, with every flower, plant and animal containing its own spirits. The Yanomani tribe of southern Venezuela and northern Brazil perform rituals using hallucinogenic drugs prepared from the bark of the virola tree to see the spirits.
Impacts and Threats of the Colonists
When Europeans first arrived in South America, there were about 6.8 million indigenous people. But colonists brought persecution, slavery and diseases that local people were not immune to.
Communities living close to the rivers were the first to be affected, as colonists used these as routes of incursion. Indigenous people living inside the forests were initially spared much of the worst aspects of this European onslaught.
Today the Amazon's native cultures are threatened by incursions onto the land from mining, logging, cattle ranching and even missionary activity. The main threat comes from the oil industry, which clears large areas of forest to access the oil reserves and often fails to clean up again afterwards, leaving the land polluted and waterways poisoned.
Almost all the tribes' problems revolve around land: outsiders either want their land, or something on or underneath it. The key threats are a massive boom in oil and gas exploration, rampant illegal logging and the rapid spread of ranching and farming.
Contacted Tribes
Yanomami
For thousands of years, the Yanomami have thrived in the rainforests of South America. The Yanomami are the largest relatively isolated tribe in South America. They live in the rainforests and mountains of northern Brazil and southern Venezuela occupying the largest area of tropical rainforest by an indigenous group anywhere in the world.. The Yanomami are probably the most well known Amazon tribal group due to their publicized, continued plight against miners, and their protests for human rights and environmental protection.
Over 1,000 gold-miners are now working illegally on Yanomami land, transmitting deadly diseases like malaria and polluting the rivers and forest with mercury. Cattle ranchers are invading and deforesting the eastern fringe of their land.
Yanomami health is suffering and critical medical care is not reaching them, especially in Venezuela.
The Brazilian congress is currently debating a bill which, if approved, will permit large-scale mining in indigenous territories. This will be extremely harmful to the Yanomami and other remote tribes in Brazil.
"Our land has to be respected. Our land is our heritage, a heritage which protects us."
The Yanomami live in large, circular, communal houses called yanos or shabonos. Some can house up to 400 people. The central area is used for activities such as rituals, feasts and games. The Yanomami day is mostly filled with leisure and social activities as they generally satisfy their needs after around 4 hours of work. They live off small scale agriculture, fishing and hunting. As is the case for most indigenous groups, even people trying to help the Yanomami have inadvertently brought disease to the community, but the Yanomami have accepted the outside world. They understand that they must communicate their rights and culture. In order to do this, the Yanomami have education programs to teach reading, writing and maths to a new generation.
Akuntsu
The Akuntsu are a tiny Amazonian tribe of just five individuals. They are the last known survivors of their people and live in Rondônia state, western Brazil.
In a few decades the Akuntsu will become extinct, and our planet will have lost a unique people, language and culture.
The Akuntsu occupy a small patch of forest. It has been legally recognised and demarcated by the Brazilian government, but is surrounded by huge cattle ranches and soya plantations. These have replaced the once extensive rainforests of Rondônia which were home to many tribes.
They live in one community, in two small malocas (houses) made of straw. They hunt wild pig, agoutis and tapir and cultivate small gardens where they grow manioc and corn. They also gather forest fruits and sometimes catch small fish in the creeks.
The Akuntsu make wooden flutes which are used in dances and rituals. They wear arm bands and anklets made of palm fibre. Shell necklaces have been replaced by necklaces of bright plastic which the Akuntsu cut from the pesticide containers left as litter by the ranchers. They paint their bodies with urucum (annatto dye) for ceremonies.
Although their land has been legally recognised, the Akuntsu are surrounded by hostile ranchers. Some still have buildings, employees and herds of cattle in the Akuntsu territory. Having witnessed the genocide of their people, and suffered extreme violence from gunmen employed by the ranchers, the Akunstu are fearful and mistrustful of most outsiders, particularly the ranch hands.
Guarani
The Guarani were one of the first peoples contacted after Europeans arrived in South America around 500 years ago.
In Brazil, there are today around 51,000 Guarani living in seven states, making them the country’s most numerous tribe.
For the Guarani, land is the origin of all life. But violent invasions by ranchers have devastated their territory and nearly all of their land has been stolen.
Guarani children starve and their leaders have been assassinated. Hundreds of Guarani men, women and children have committed suicide.
Deforestation has converted the once-fertile Guarani homeland into a vast network of cattle ranches, and sugar cane plantations. The destruction of the forest has meant that hunting and fishing are no longer possible, and there is barely enough land even to plant crops. Malnutrition is a serious problem and since 2005 at least 53 Guarani children have died of starvation.
For years the Guarani have been searching for a place revealed to them by their ancestors where people live free from pain and suffering, which they call ‘the land without evil’.
Over hundreds of years, the Guarani have travelled vast distances in search of this land. Today they are squeezed onto tiny patches of land surrounded by cattle ranches and vast fields of soya and sugar cane. Some have no land at all, and live camped by roadsides.
The Guarani in Mato Grosso do Sul suffer from racism and discrimination, and high levels of harassment from the police. It is estimated that there are over 200 Guarani in jail with little or no access to legal advice, trapped in a legal system they do not understand. The response of this deeply spiritual people to the chronic lack of land has been an epidemic of suicide unique in South America. Since 1986 more than 517 Guarani have committed suicide, the youngest just nine years old.