Claudia Andujar is a unprecedented photographer who makes use of her work to defend Indigenous rights. She obtained the distinguished Goethe Medal in 2018, and an exhibition honoring her legacy is happening on the Fondation Cartier, Paris, 30 January -10 Might 2020.
Right here, her work helps illustrate the world of the Yanomami shaman. The phrases quoted alongside her pictures belong to her pal of many many years, Davi Kopenawa Yanomami, whose writing has beforehand featured on our weblog.
Davi and Claudia, together with Survival Worldwide, had been leaders within the profitable marketing campaign to ascertain the Yanomami Indigenous Territory in Brazil. Along with Yanomami territory in Venezuela, it’s the biggest space of forested land beneath Indigenous management anyplace on Earth.
Davi has requested us to let you know that his tribe are in grave hazard and urgently want your assist. Hundreds of violent gold-miners are working illegally of their territory. These invaders are transmitting lethal ailments, contaminating the surroundings and poisoning the Yanomami.
Davi first noticed xapiripë as a toddler and continued to see them in his sleep as he grew up. When he grew to become an grownup, he requested to be initiated as a shaman.
“We Yanomami be taught with the good spirits, the xapiripë. We be taught to know the xapiripë, the way to see them and take heed to them. Solely shamans — those that know the xapiripë — can see them, as a result of they seem like people however are tiny as specks of glowing mud and vivid like gentle. Their songs are highly effective, and their considering is straight.”
Yanomami shamans transcend the bodily confines of their our bodies and the bounds of the human consciousness to commune with the xapiripë.
“When for the primary time you sniff the powder produced from the yakoana tree, xapiripë spirits start to collect round you. First, you hear from afar their chants of happiness, faint because the hum of mosquitoes. You then start to see scintillating lights trembling up excessive, coming from each route within the sky. Progressively the spirits reveal themselves, advancing and retreating with very sluggish steps.”
Yanomami shamans inhale yakoana powder with the intention to enter a dream state. The powder is adminstered by means of an extended horoma tube, historically constructed from the hollowed stem of a palm tree.
“That is how we make the spirits dance. There are a lot of, many xapiripë, not just some, however 1000’s, like stars. Some stay within the sky, some stay beneath the bottom and others stay within the excessive mountains that are stuffed with forests and flowers. We name these sacred locations ‘hutu pata’. When the solar is excessive within the sky, the xapiripë sleep. At nightfall, they start to seem. Once we are sleeping, they’re dancing.”
“One after the other the spirits arrived. The toucan spirits arrived with their huge ear sticks and vivid crimson loin cloths. The hummingbird folks arrived and flew round. The moka frog spirits had been there with quivers of arrows on their backs. Then got here the peccary spirits, the bat folks and the spirits of the waterfall. My soul started to shine. All got here and slung their hammocks in my chest.”
“The xapiripë have danced for shamans because the very starting of time, and so they proceed to bounce right this moment. Their heads are coated with white hawk down, and so they put on black bands manufactured from monkey tails and turquoise cotinga feathers of their ears. They dance in a circle, unhurriedly.”
“The xapiripë descend to us on threads as wonderful as a spider’s internet. They’re lovely, painted with vivid colors and urucum (annatto). Their armlets are embellished with macaw and parrot feathers. They dance very superbly and sing in another way. There are completely different songs: the music of the macaw, of the parrot, of the tapir, of the tortoise and of the eagle.”
“If the xapiripë didn’t exist, we might not be alive. The evil spirits would have devoured us way back. They know in regards to the sicknesses that afflict us. They throw the illness distant, into the underworld. And they also treatment us.”
Yanomami shamans additionally enlist the assistance of xapiripë to treatment human sicknesses. Diagnosing and detecting ailments takes years of shamanistic expertise. Additionally they use completely different medicinal vegetation to deal with fevers, stomach-aches, muscular pains and different illnesses. Normally, each ailment has its treatment, apart from ailments which were introduced in by outsiders, to which the Yanomami have little immunity.
By communing with and controlling the xapiripë, the Yanomami shamans will not be solely defending their very own group, however taking care of the remainder of the world as effectively. Davi believes that many highly effective shamans are wanted to regulate the planet.
“We, the shamans, additionally be just right for you, the whites. Our shamans know that our planet is altering. We all know the well being of the Amazon. We all know that it’s harmful to abuse nature, and that while you destroy the rainforest, you chop the arteries of the long run and the world’s power simply ebbs away. The sky is stuffed with smoke as a result of our rainforest is being logged and burnt. The rains come late, the solar behaves in a wierd approach. The lungs of the sky are polluted. The world is in poor health. The forest will die whether it is destroyed by the whites. The place will we go when now we have destroyed our world? When the planet is silent, how will we be taught?”
For tribes, for nature, for all humanity.
