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Amazonian Indigenous Leader Davi Kopenawa Asks Princeton to Urgently Support the Struggles of the Rainforest’s Guardians
The urgency of the crises unfolding in the Amazon cannot be overstated: Illegal gold miners have contaminated the forest’s waterways, causing so many deaths by malnutrition and other maladies of the indigenous Yanomami people that Brazil’s new president has opened a genocide probe. And there are consequences for all of us, too — as these miners despoil the Amazon Rainforest, they diminish one of the planet’s largest natural carbon sinks and a crucial bastion of biocultural diversity.
This was the message of Yanomami leader Davi Kopenawa, who visited Princeton on Jan. 31. Kopenawa, who has been advocating for his people’s rights since the ’70s, is a renowned shaman and Indigenous leader. He is the author of the seminal 2013 book The Falling Sky: Words of a Yanomami Shaman and the president of the Hutukara Yanomami Association.
The Yanomami (meaning “human-beings” in their language) are a group of 35,000 who live across 250 villages deep inside the Amazon Forest in northern Brazil and parts of southern Venezuela. In 1992, after years of struggle against commercial encroachment, the Yanomami won a major victory when the Brazilian government preserved more than 37,000 square miles for the tribe to continue not only their way of life, but their stewardship of the forest’s integrity.
Then, on a campaign stump in 2018, former far-right president Jair Bolsonaro boldly promised to open the Amazon for commercial exploitation. According to Brazil’s National Institute of Space Research, his four-year term saw 17,800 square miles of forest razed, an area approximately the size of Taiwan. “Kopenawa’s historic visit speaks to the fatal effects of Bolsonaro’s political-economic campaign of decimating the Indigenous foundations of livelihood … that ultimately sought to replicate Native North American genocides,” Professor of Anthropology João Biehl said in his opening remarks to a large audience overflowing Chancellor Green Rotunda and to more than 500 viewers on the Brazil LAB YouTube Channel.
“I’m in mourning,” Kopenawa said at the beginning of his remarks. “My people are dying. Our children are getting sick with diseases brought by the white men destroyers.” Kopenawa went on to describe that Brazil’s new president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who took office in January, has promised to remedy the “absolutely urgent” situation.
Kopenawa described the ways in which the struggle of the Yanomami have implications for humanity: “The whole world knows the importance of the Amazonian rainforest. The forest is important … to the entire world,” he said. “I’m talking about protecting the globe. For we are living here, on this Earth. It’s the only Earth we have for everybody. We are one people on Earth.”
The evening event was kicked off with a reception held in Prospect House, where President Christopher L. Eisgruber welcomed Kopenawa and a group of Yanomami artists, activists, and art curators. “Davi said to me that he comes from the people of the forest here to the ‘city’ to explain to us about other worlds and the obligations of care we have to the world that we all share,” explained Eisgruber. “And I said, in this ‘city,’ what we do is to bring together many worlds.” During the reception, Kopenawa also discussed the Yanomami plight and exchanged ideas of solidarity with Amaney Jamal, Dean of the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, and Aly Kassam-Remtulla, vice-provost for International Affairs and Operations.
Kopenawa and fellow Yanomami were in the area for the Feb. 3 debut of The Yanomami Struggle, an exhibition at The Shed cultural center in New York City, organized together with the Instituto Moreira Salles and the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain. The show, which runs until April 16, 2023, explores the decades-long collaboration between photographer Claudia Andujar and the Yanomami people. The exhibition juxtaposes Andujar’s iconic work with drawings, paintings, and videos by Yanomami artists André Taniki, Ehuana Yaira, Joseca Mokahesi, Orlando Nakɨ uxima, Poraco Hɨko, Sheroanawe Hakihiiwe, and Vital Warasi. PIIRS’s Brazil LAB and the Department of Anthropology are organizing student trips to see the exhibition.
“The unprecedented collective effort to bring Davi Kopenawa to Princeton and to learn about the Yanomami struggle speaks to the University’s growing effort at Indigenizing academia,” said Biehl, who also directs the Brazil LAB at the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies (PIIRS). In 2021, the University committed to building up its engagement with Native Americans and indigenous communities, an effort that has so far resulted in measures such as a land acknowledgment, an Indigenous Studies professorship, a pre-college summer program for prospective Native American students and a seminar series.
During Kopenawa’s visit, Noah Collins, a graduate student in anthropology from the Cherokee Nation and White Mountain Apache Tribe in Oklahoma, kicked off remarks at both the reception and the keynote event.
“It's one of the great privileges of being Indigenous to have relations and relatives all around the world and to be able to share these experiences that are mirrored in the United States and other countries,” he said at the reception welcoming the Yanomami delegation. “I think the way that we do things is what makes us special and unique and beautiful.”
Following Kopenawa’s keynote, Deborah Yashar, professor of politics and international affairs and PIIRS director, noted that “he forces us to think about the challenges posed not only by climate change, but also by greed and by politics in a fundamental way … what is, what is good and what can be.” In replying to Yashar’s question about the relationship between Yanomami activism and art making, Kopenawa said “before our Amazonian forest ends, we are drawing it … That’s why the Yanomami began drawing. For the sons and daughters, grandchildren and kin, to see the beauty, to value our art and our struggle to protect the lungs of the Earth.”
During a lively Q&A session at the conclusion of the historic event, a student asked Kopenawa what she could do to help Yanomami cause. The Indigenous leader replied with a request that Princeton students write directly to President Joe Biden. “We need him to understand our fight, to have the willingness to give us value and be an ally.”
The event was co-organized by PIIRS’ Brazil LAB, the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, the Department of Anthropology, the Department of Art and Archaeology, the Princeton University Art Museum, the Lewis Center for the Arts, the Pace Center for Civic Engagement, the High Meadows Environmental Institute, the University Center for Human Values, the Humanities Council, the Program in Latin American Studies, the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs and the Effron Center for the Study of America.