A biography of the Amazonian chief and shaman
Davi Kopenawa Yanomami is a shaman and spokesman for the Yanomami folks in Brazil. He led the long-running worldwide marketing campaign to safe Yanomami land rights, for which he gained recognition in Brazil and world wide.
His braveness, combative spirit and tenacity are mirrored in his Yanomami nickname, ‘Kopenawa’, or ‘hornet’.
Davi was born round 1955 in Marakana, a Yanomami group on the Higher Toototobi river within the Brazilian state of Roraima, northern Amazon. One in all his strongest childhood recollections is of his mom hiding him below a basket when white folks got here to his village for the primary time.
Within the Nineteen Fifties and Sixties, visits by the SPI (Brazilian authorities “Indian Safety Service”), and later by missionaries from the US-based New Tribes Mission, introduced deadly illnesses to the remoted Yanomami. Davi’s group was decimated and each his mother and father died within the epidemics which swept by means of the world in 1959 and 1967.
Davi labored as an interpreter for FUNAI (Brazil’s Indigenous affairs division) within the Seventies and witnessed the horrible impacts of the Perimetral Norte (northern perimeter freeway) on many Yanomami communities. This highway was bulldozed by means of the southern a part of the territory, residence to distant Yanomami communities. Many Yanomami died from illnesses like measles and flu transmitted by roadworkers, and two communities have been solely worn out.
In 1985, Davi started to combat for the popularity of the huge space inhabited by the Yanomami within the Brazilian states of Roraima and Amazonas. 1000’s of goldminers have been invading the world, and Yanomami have been dying of illnesses to which that they had no resistance.
In 1988 Davi gained a UN International 500 award in recognition of his battle to guard his folks and protect their rainforest.
His battle has taken him to many international locations. The primary time he left Brazil was on the invitation of Survival Worldwide, which in 1989 requested him to simply accept the Proper Livelihood or ‘Various Nobel Prize’ on its behalf in a ceremony within the Swedish Parliament. The prize was awarded in recognition of Survival’s devoted campaigning alongside the Yanomami, and of success in ‘elevating public consciousness of the significance of the knowledge of conventional peoples for the way forward for humanity’. Throughout this journey Davi spoke of the horrible affect of the goldminers’ invasion on the Yanomami’s well being and setting, and warned that the Yanomami would solely survive if their land rights have been recognised.
Subsequently Survival organised Davi’s first journey to the USA in 1991, the place he met then-UN Secretary Basic Pérez de Cuéllar, members of the Inter American Fee on Human Rights and American senators to boost consciousness of the upcoming genocide of the Yanomami.
In the midst of his travels, Davi has met 4 Brazilian presidents together with President Lula, Al Gore (former vice President of the USA) and King Charles III (when he was Prince Charles) and King Harald V of Norway and Pope Francis.
The Yanomami space was formally recognised by the Brazilian authorities simply earlier than it hosted the UN’s first Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. Protecting over 9.6 million hectares, it is among the planet’s most vital reservoirs of genetic variety, in addition to being residence to some 30,000 Yanomami. The mixed space inhabited by the Yanomami in Brazil and Venezuela make it the most important Indigenous territory in tropical rainforests anyplace on the earth.
Davi continues to play an important position in battling for his folks’s rights, and is the driving drive behind an modern bilingual training undertaking which goals to assist the Yanomami defend their rights themselves.
In 2004, with different Yanomami leaders, he based the Yanomami rights organisation Hutukara (the a part of the sky from which the earth was born). He’s presently Hutukara’s president.
In 2010 Davi revealed his autobiography, “The Falling Sky – Phrases of a Yanomami Shaman” in collaboration with anthropologist Bruce Albert. It has been revealed in French, English, Portuguese and Spanish.
He has featured in a number of movies, together with “The Falling Sky” which had its premiere on the “Administrators’ Fortnight” throughout the Cannes Movie Pageant in 2024 and “Holding up the Sky” which premiered in 2023.
Davi continues to play an important position in battling for his folks’s rights for which he has obtained nationwide and worldwide recognition. He gained a UN International 500 award in 1989 and in April 1999, he was awarded the Ordem do Rio Branco by President Fernando Henrique Cardoso in recognition of his work on behalf of the Yanomami folks. He obtained a particular honorable point out within the Bartolomé de las Casas prize in 2008. In 2019 Davi and Hutukara gained a prestigious Proper Livelihood Award.
He was awarded an honorary doctorate from the State College of São Paulo in 2023.
Davi spends a lot time in his group, Watoriki (the Windy Mountain), practising shamanism. He’s married to Fátima they usually have six youngsters and two grandchildren.
