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 Could 2020.
Right here, her work helps illustrate the world of the Yanomami shaman. The phrases quoted alongside her photographs belong to her good friend of many a long time, 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 below Indigenous management anyplace on Earth.
Davi has requested us to inform you that his tribe are in grave hazard and urgently want your help. 1000’s of violent gold-miners are working illegally of their territory. These invaders are transmitting lethal ailments, contaminating the atmosphere and poisoning the Yanomami.
Davi first noticed xapiripë as a baby and continued to see them in his sleep as he grew up. When he turned an grownup, he requested to be initiated as a shaman.
“We Yanomami study with the good spirits, the xapiripë. We study to know the xapiripë, learn how to see them and take heed to them. Solely shamans — those that know the xapiripë — can see them, as a result of they appear to be 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 course within the sky. Step by step 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 via an extended horoma tube, historically created from the hollowed stem of a palm tree.
“That is how we make the spirits dance. There are numerous, many xapiripë, not just some, however hundreds, like stars. Some stay within the sky, some stay below 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 look. Once we are sleeping, they’re dancing.”
“One after the other the spirits arrived. The toucan spirits arrived with their massive ear sticks and vivid purple 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 immediately. Their heads are lined 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 positive 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 fantastically and sing otherwise. There are totally different songs: the tune of the macaw, of the parrot, of the tapir, of the tortoise and of the eagle.”
“If the xapiripë didn’t exist, we’d not be alive. The evil spirits would have devoured us way back. They know in regards to the diseases that afflict us. They throw the illness distant, into the underworld. And they also remedy us.”
Yanomami shamans additionally enlist the assistance of xapiripë to remedy human diseases. Diagnosing and detecting ailments takes years of shamanistic expertise. In addition they use totally different medicinal crops to deal with fevers, stomach-aches, muscular pains and different illnesses. On the whole, each ailment has its remedy, aside 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 are usually not solely defending their very own neighborhood, however taking care of the remainder of the world as properly. Davi believes that many highly effective shamans are wanted to manage the planet.
“We, the shamans, additionally give you the results you want, 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 narrow the arteries of the longer term and the world’s power simply ebbs away. The sky is filled with smoke as a result of our rainforest is being logged and burnt. The rains come late, the solar behaves in a wierd method. The lungs of the sky are polluted. The world is sick. The forest will die whether it is destroyed by the whites. The place will we go when we’ve got destroyed our world? When the planet is silent, how will we study?”
For tribes, for nature, for all humanity.
