Yanomami

Laurence A. Moore (larrymor@crl.com)
4 Mar 1995 18:53:29 -0800


Germaine and Tony -

Ran a search and found these for you:

"After flying by helicopter over Yanomami Indian lands in the
northern Amazon, Brazil's new president has ordered the police to
dynamite all illegal landing strips carved out of the forest by
gold miners. // By ordering the destruction of approximately
100 dirt airstrips, the president, Fernando Collor de Mello, said
he hoped to block the miners from returning to the Indians'
mineral-rich lands. // In the last three years, the arrival of
45,000 miners brought devastating diseases to the Yanomami, the
last major isolated tribe in the Americas." --- Press Democrat,
27 March 1990 (Press Democrat news services)

"Considered by anthropologists to be the last major isolated
tribe in the Americas, the nomadic Yanomami survived for
millennia on hunting, fishing and forest agriculture -- using
neither pottery nor stone tools. // Deep in the jungles of
northern Brazil and southern Venezuela, they carried out their
seasonal migrations undisturbed except for occasional visits from
anthropologists and missionaries. // Contact with the 20th
century came abruptly and violently in 1985, when prospectors
poured into Raraima, onto lands the national government had
previously set aside as Yanomami reserves. // Then-President
Jose Sarney declared the lands a national park, which, under
Brazilian law, can be exploited for mining. // An elderly
Yanomami chief who was assigned the Portuguese name Raimundo when
he arrived at the Case do Indio said the influx of [gold] miners
-- now estimated at 45,000 -- brought disaster. // 'The
garimpeiros have frightened the animals, so we can't hunt,' he
said. 'They've poisoned our rivers [mercury], so we can't fish.'
/.../ Some hope for a reversal of the destructive trend emerged
last March, when newly elected President Fernando Coller de Mello
-- mindful of the mounting international outcry over the
Yanomami's plight -- ordered the dynamiting of all illegal
landing strips carved out of the forest by gold miners. // But
only about 14 of the estimated 150 strips have been destroyed
since then." --- Kathleen Wheaton, San Francisco Chronicle, 29
August 1990

"Malaria, hepatitis, tuberculosis and parasites brought by
European descendants have wiped out one in 10 of Brazil's
Yanomami Amazon natives since 1987, according to Funai, the
government's national Indian foundation." --- Steve Newman, San
Francisco Chronicle, 17 November 1990

"Brazil. Rejecting opposition from the military, President
Fernando Collor de Mello took a major step yesterday to satisfy
environmentalists' demands by formalizing the reservation of the
Amazon's Yanomami Indians. // Collor's decree granted permanent
rights over 36,358 square miles of dense Amazon rain forest -- an
area slightly larger than the state of Indiana -- to a primitive
tribe whose population has dwindled to 10,000. Decimated by
malaria and other diseases brought to their traditional lands by
gold prospectors, the Yanomami have been threatened with
extinction. // In creating a single reservation in the northern
Brazilian state of Roraima, Collor overturned a 1988 action that
divided the tribe's territory among 19 parcels of land. The
Yanomami, who do not use clothing, range across wide expanses of
jungle hunting with bows and arrows, fishing and growing fruit
and manioc. // Conservationists here and abroad had pressed
Collor to set the reservation boundaries as a litmus test for his
commitment to the environment. // The government Indian Affairs
agency reported this week that police have removed all 27,000
gold prospectors from the region." --- San Francisco Chronicle,
16 November 1991 (Washington Post)

"Gold miners poaching in a Yanomami Indian reservation in the
northwest Amazon massacred at least five members of the Stone Age
tribe, Brazilian Attorney General Aristides Junqueira said
yesterday. // Davi Yanomami, a tribal chief and spokesman, said
four other Yanomami died in a separate clash with gold miners
along the banks of the Mucajai River, which runs through the
37,000-square-mile reserve. Indian Foundation authorities have
not yet confirmed the second incident. // The Commission for
the Creation of the Yanomami Reserve, an indigenous activist
group, said the five were killed in late July in a remote jungle
region near the border with Venezuela. // A group of Yanomamis
walked for weeks through dense jungle in Roraima state to report
the deaths. // About 40,000 clandestine prospectors moved into
the Yanomami's traditional territory, rich in gold, diamonds, tin
and other minerals, in 1987. // Soldiers and federal police
have repeatedly driven the miners from the reservation, created
in 1991, but they usually return." --- San Francisco Chronicle,
14 August 1993 (AP)

"Gold miners killed 40 members of a remote Indian tribe near
Brazil's Amazon border with Venezuela this week, officials of
Brazil's Indian protection agency said yesterday. // 'Some of
the children were decapitated with machete blows,' Suami dos
Santos, the agency's administrator in Roraima state said of the
killings Sunday [15 August]. 'What causes us great indignation
and repulsion is that the murders were carried out with touches
of cruelty and savagery.' /.../ The victims, including 10
children, belonged to the Yanomami tribe. Considered the largest
unacculturated Indian tribe of the Americas, the 20,000 Yanomami
have been the focus of an international campaign to insure their
physical and cultural survival. Breaking an isolation of
millenniums, the Yanomami's first contacts with the outside
world, in the 1970s, led to cultural disorientation and death
from imported diseases. /.../ Attacking with guns and machetes
Sunday, the miners killed as many Yanomami as possible and then
burned down two thatched, circular lodges, according to
survivors. // 'First, they shot the men with guns; then the cut
the throats of the women and children with machetes,' said Anton
Netto, a Funai spokesman." --- James Brooke, New York Times, San
Francisco Chronicle, 20 August 1993

"Brazil. Federal police began a jungle search for gold
prospectors suspected of slaughtering nearly an entire Indian
village near the Venezuelan border. // Authorities were
searching for Joao Neto, a rancher believed to have financed the
miners who took part in the slaying of about 40 Yanomami Indians,
members of one of the largest and last Stone Age tribes. /.../
Investigators of the government's National Indian Foundation say
about 15 miners ambushed the Homoxi-Itu village on Tuesday [17
August] after luring the Yanomami from two 'malocas,' or communal
huts, with rice and sugar. // The miners opened fire with
shotguns as the men emerged from the straw-and-wood huts. They
then charged the malocas, stabbing to death women and more than
10 children, said Wilke Celio da Silva, a Yanomami expert for the
foundation who visited the village on Thursday. // The invaders
dismembered the bodies with machetes and set fire to the malocas.
News reports said four Yanomami managed to escape the gunfire and
fled into the jungle to contact a foundation outpost. // 'This
was genocide, an ethnic extermination,' said Attorney General
Aristides Junqueira, who visited the region with Justice Minister
Mauricio Correa and Indian foundation president Claudio Romero.
/.../ Miners first started exploiting the lands of the Yanomami
in 1987, bringing malaria, tuberculosis and other diseases that
quickly killed 2,000 of the 20,000 Yanomami in Brazil and
southern Venezuela. They also destroyed large tracts of rain
forest, polluted rivers and chased off wild animals. // In
1991, the government created a 38,000-square-mile reservation for
the Yanomamis and expelled 40,000 miners, but prospectors
returned." --- San Francisco Chronicle, 21 August 1993
(Chronicle Wire Services)

"As outrage mounted over the massacre of 73 Indians by gold
miners, President Itamar Franco yesterday called a meeting of the
National Defense Council for today to enlist the help of the
military in hunting down the killers. /.../ Among the 73 killed
were 34 children and two pregnant women, said Francisco Bezerra
de Lima, a Funai official. // Lime drew up a list of the dead
after lengthy interviews Friday night with four survivors of the
two lodges, in Roraima state. /.../ The encroachment of gold
miners into their remote forested homeland since the 1980s has
devastated the Yanomami, who number about 10,000 in Brazil and
10,000 in Venezuela. Since 1987, about 1,500 Brazilian Yanomami
have died of diseases contracted from outsiders, usually malaria
and tuberculosis." --- James Brooke, New York Times, San
Francisco Chronicle, 23 August 1993

"Rio de Janeiro. Brazilian police officials said yesterday that
reports last week that 73 Yanomami Indians died in a massacre in
the remote Amazon jungle are incorrect. // The officials said
that the number was 16 to 18 and that the slayings took place in
two areas of neighboring Venezuela and not in Brazil as
originally believed." --- San Francisco Chronicle, 1 September
1993 (Chronicle Wire Services)

"Brazilian President Itamar Franco has fired the head of Brazil's
top Indian agency, apparently over his handling of the Yanomami
Indian massacre. // Claudio Romero, president of the National
Indian Foundation, had announced last month that 73 Yanomami had
been killed by gold miners in Brazil. // Investigations
revealed a lower number of casualties, 18, and that the killings
took place on the Venezuela side of the border." --- San
Francisco Chronicle, 4 September 1993 (Chronicle Wire Services)

Hope those are helpful.

- Larry