Brazil: 9.4 Million Ha. Set Aside for Yanomami Tribe Erika Harding

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11-27-1991 Brazil: 9.4 Million Ha. Set Aside For Yanomami Tribe Erika Harding

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Recommended Citation Harding, Erika. "Brazil: 9.4 Million Ha. Set Aside For Yanomami Tribe." (1991). https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/notisur/7798

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Latin America Digital Beat (LADB) at UNM Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in NotiSur by an authorized administrator of UNM Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. LADB Article Id: 063907 ISSN: 1060-4189 Brazil: 9.4 Million Ha. Set Aside For Yanomami Tribe by Erika Harding Category/Department: General Published: Wednesday, November 27, 1991

In a landmark decision on Nov. 15, President Fernando Collor de Mello announced that lands have been permanently set aside for the Yanomami, the oldest but most recently discovered indigenous tribe in Brazil. The government designated 9.4 million ha. as "permanent indigenous lands" for 10,000 Yanomami, who have become the international symbol of indigenous people struggling for rights to cultural preservation. Collor de Mello said the size of the reserve in Brazil's northern Amazon region will ensure that the Yanomami have sufficient space to fish, hunt and roam in order to preserve their way of life. During the past decade, traditional Yanomami lands have been invaded by thousands of miners who have fought the tribe in order to exploit the Amazon's streams and subsoil. But the miners also brought malaria, venereal diseases and measles. Those diseases, previously unknown to the Yanomami, have decimated several tribal communities. According to Davi Kopenawa Yanomami, leader of the tribe's land protection campaign in Brazil, in the past two years at least 1,500 Yanomamis have died from tuberculosis, pneumonia, flu, and malaria, or have been shot by gold prospectors. He said, "Since 1987, our land has been invaded by some 45,000 gold prospectors." Kopenawa Yanomami, who received the Global 500 award from the United Nations in 1988 for his environmental conservation efforts, headed the campaign for demarcation of tribal lands to keep intruders out. President Collor de Mello's announcement was applauded by environmental groups and indigenous and human rights organizations. Military and political leaders had opposed demarcation of indigenous lands on grounds of threatening national sovereignty and economic development. The military had proposed the creation of a 20 km.-wide security zone along the border, which would have reduced the reserve by 20,000 ha. According to the Indigenous Mission Council, and Claudia Andujar, coordinator of the commission to create the Yanomami park, some military officers fear that the Yanomami in Brazil and Venezuela will join forces and create an independent Yanomami state. There are about 10,000 Yanomamis in Brazil, and 12,000 in Venezuela. The tribe's traditional lands encompasses territory in Brazil, Colombia, Guyana and Venezuela. (Sources: Inter Press Service, 10/24/91; Spanish news service EFE, 11/05/91; Agence France-Presse, 10/30/91, 11/15/91, 11/16/91, 11/19/91)

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