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Yet while life has been irrevocably altered by contact with "the white man", the ancient customs and traditions of the Yanomami have survived so far. As Davi Kopenawa says ..."We are a strong people still, we have a great spiritual energy, and great power. We will not be destroyed".
(This page:) Yanomami villagers of Ajarani (left) and Demini (below) relax in and around their Maloca - the communal round-house. |
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Although the government programs that once granted land to settlers have been theoretically abandoned, there is little political will in Brazil to protect the rights of Indians. At least 60,000 farmers have poured into Roraima from Brazil's impoverished northeast since the territory was made a state in 1988 and some 40,000 miners have swarmed into the reserve since 1987. There are still about ten families arriving every day to claim new land in settlements. As Manuel Andrade Freitas, Roraima's superintendent of the federal land-management agency INCRA, told a reporter in March: " [the situation] is out of control".
Photographs by Ron Haviv. |
