.

GENERAL

 
... General | Conflicts | Intercultural Education| Environment | Yanomami Health


.


CCPY OPENS NEW OFFICE IN BRASILIA

CCPY's new head office in Brasilia was opened on 3rd January 2000. The organisation's Executive Secretary, Fernando Bittencourt, is in charge.
It was decided to move the CCPY head office from Sao Paulo to Brasilia because being in the capital enables it to monitor public policies affecting the Yanomami and their land more easily and efficiently.This has always been one of the CCPY's most important role s. The move also means greater autonomy for the organisation's various projects: the Yanomami Education Project, the Yanomami Agroforestry Project and the Visibility Project. From January, the only project remaining in Sao Paulo is the Visibility Project, coordinated by Claudia Andujar. The principal aim of this project is to maintain the Yanomami question in the public eye, both in Brazil and abroad, by means of cultural activities.

New CCPY office in Brasilia:
Address: CLN 210 Bloco C salas 204/207
Brasilia, DF
CEP: 70862-530
Telephone/Fax: 61-347 2980
E-mail: ccpydf@uol.com.br

Visibility Project in Sao Paulo:
Address: Rua Sao Carlos do Pinhal 345, apto.2006
Sao Paulo, SP
CEP: 01003-001
Telephone/Fax: 11-288 4008
E-mail: cl.andujar@uol.com.br

.

WARNING !!

The deterioration of the quality of life of the Yanomami has been the subject of wide coverage in the international press, especially from the 1980s. Today nobody can be unaware of the advance of goldmining in indian lands and the terrible consequences it brings in its wake: contagious diseases, environmental pollution, social violence. Many indians have already died and others will become ill, in spite of the medical assistance now being provided to more than 6000 Yanomami by the newly created NGO URIHI-Saude Yanomami. URIHI covers 12 regions containing over half of the total Yanomami population in Brazil. In its first bulletin URIHI was already able to describe promising results.

URIHI-Saude Yanomami is funded by FUNASA, the government's National Health Foundation. The other regions in the Yanomami area receive medical assistance from a number of other organisations, NGOs and religious missions, or continue to be assisted directly by FUNASA. In spite of these promising new developments with regard to the indians' health, the bitter saga of the Yanomami caused by the repeated invasion of their land in search of gold will continue to make news beyond the frontiers of the Amazon, in media headlines, on congress platforms, in courts and in public opinion. In 1999 the successive battles in the interminable war between garimpeiros (goldminers) and Yanomami were reported by different media throughout the year. But this dramatic moment in the existence of a centuries-old ethnic group needs to be continually reported.

The proposal to substitute prospectors and mining camps with mechanized mining and mining companies, making mining in indian land official, put forward by some congressmen, will only feed the controversy and confound public opinion. While politicians and businessmen representing powerful economic interests conspire in the wings of Brazilian politics to find ways of legally opening up Yanomami territory to the gold rush, a new FUNAI president has taken up his post with an inaugural speech in defence of the indians. The new president, lawyer Carlos Frederico Mares de Souza Filho, said:

"Now that the areas have been legally demarcated and guaranteed we must find the most adequate development process for each territory, chosen by the indigenous population itself."

These are encouraging words for those who are fighting for indigenous rights in Brazil. They express the desire for change in government policy, which now seems to indicate a commitment on the part of FUNAI to the future of each people.

.

PROSPECTING OR MECHANIZED MINING ?

While the invasion of the garimpeiros is being denounced, Senator Romeu Juca of the pro-government PFL party in Roraima, is only waiting for the new Statute for Indian Societies to be approved by congress before negociating approval for his own bill to regulate mining in indigenous areas. Yet anyone who has followed events in the Yanomami area knows that the building of the Northern Perimetral highway in the 1970s and the later invasion of gold prospectors led to thousands of indians dying of malaria and other diseases brought by the intruders. They also caused environmental pollution, violence and and the breakdown of many communities.

The Brazilian state has revealed itself incapable of imposing its own laws, thwarted by the political and administrative structure. The result is that even after demarcation, the Yanomami territory continues to be invaded.

"In spite of several education programmes, including that of the CCPY, the Yanomami are not ready to face a new gold rush, even if it were organised by the mining companies. The great majority of the Yanomami only speak their own language, very few can write and they produce only enough for survival (....)."

At the end of the previous decade, during the height of the gold fever, thousands of adventurers invaded Roraima in search of gold. Production in the Yanomami area reached two tonnes of gold a month, double the production of Serra Pelada (Brazil's largest open air mine in the state of Para). At the beginning of the 1990s the federal police began removing the miners from the reserve. Now at the start of the third millennium, the indians are about to see another gold rush in their lands. Yanomami territory is the most sought after target in a moneymaking business: mining in indigenous lands. The difference is that, this time, the occupation carried out by mining companies promises to be civilized. (Update No. 102 - 10.1.99 - CCPY)

It is a mistake to imagine that most Yanomami understand what a mining company is, or that they are in a condition to be able to negociate with one, or even tell the difference between their representatives and mere autonomous goldminers. That is why the organisations and anthropologists who work with the Yanomami applauded the inaugural speech of the new FUNAI president, Carlos Frederico Mares de Souza Filho, who declared on 16th November 1999: "WE MUST WORK REGION BY REGION".

"The work we have to do is extremely hard but it should be done in a plural spirit, a civic spirit, with a lot of listening and profound reflection. I am aware that I am taking on a post with commitments that will certainly be very difficult to fulfill, but what is fundamental is to change the logic, then practice will adapt to it. We must work region by region, counting on support not only from the federal government, but from local states, from local populations, from local civil society, even if interminable discussions may be necessary. (...) We must, once the areas have been demarcated and guaranteed, find the most suitable development process for each territory, chosen by the indigenous population themselves. The state should only have the function of facilitating, stimulating and making it possible to turn these choices into reality. To do this a restructuring of the indigenous agency is needed, so that it will work to this end, will adopt this logic, (...) (...) We need to point to a more promising future. And the most promising future, Your Excellency, Minister of Justice, is the introduction of policies for each people, with friendly relationships between peoples united in brotherly feeling by living so close to each other. May this moment be marked by the pact of peace in the relations between indigenous peoples and the state, a long lasting peace, because it is founded on respect, on mutual interest and on unity (...).

Socioenvironmental Institute
www.socioambiental.org

.

The Annual Assembly of the CCPY redefines priorities and targets and welcomes new directors

CCPY held its annual assembly on lst August 2000 in the Anthropology Department of the University of Brasilia (UnB). The priorities, strategies and goals for the next year were redefined. The new president, anthropologist Alcida Ramos, a lecturer at the University of Brasilia, who has worked with the Yanomami since 1968, and several new directors, took their places.

Once again the Education Project was chosen as CCPY's leading project because of its importance and the multiplier effect produced by the Yanomami who have become literate. "This project has an extraordinary potential for preparing the Yanomami to face the pressures which have been accumulating over the decades on their natural resources and which, as several of us have had the bitter task of accompanying, may have devastating consequences for the Yaanomami people", declared Alcida Ramos in a document which she presented to CCPY members. "It is essential that we improve the efficiency of this project, bringing it to its maximum capacity, because time is running out for the Yanomami", she added.

The Environmental Project for Increasing Forest Density, whose aim is to recover areas which have been degraded since 1987 by the activities of the garimpeiros, was defined as CCPY's second priority. Because it is an innovative project it will depend on the contribution of specialists for its execution on a solid basis. The direct participation of the Yanomami was also considered fundamental for its success, principally because it will improve their living conditions, meeting the demands that arise from population growth, the tendency to a more sedentary life style and the growing scarcity of some resources. In the Homoxi region in particular, these changes have already been observed.

The question of safeguarding the Yanomami territory was another important theme dealt with at the annual assembly. In the national congress the attempts by politicians to further their own economic interests by cancelling the demarcation of the Yanomami area continue. Invasions of various sorts continue to put pressure on the territory, placing the rights of the Yanomami people to their own land and its resources at risk. The big forest fire which swept Roraima in 1998 destroying about 100 sq.km of the demarcation line in the Apiau region, and the invasions in the region of Ajarani are two real examples that demonstrate the need for care and for strategies in terms of territorial vigilance. During the courtesy visit by CCPY members to the president of FUNAI on 2nd August, the first steps towards consolidating the eastern border of the Yanomami area were taken. Mining is a constant threat demanding permanent watchfulness from both the Yanomami and the CCPY. The organisation is planning a special advisory work group to look at this question. The Visibility and Publicity department will be enlarged to allow more participation by the Yanomami in interethnic policy and in arranging more exchanges with other ethnic groups.

Increasing the flow of information about the present situation of indigenous peoples and their demands for their constitutional rights is seen as an essential step towards encouraging the interaction of the Yanomami with other indigenous peoples. CCPY wants to encourage the production of craftwork, graphic arts and other cultural products which could also generate income. CCPY advisers would accompany any question relating to intellectual property rights which might arise from the marketing of Yanomami art

The binational situation of the Yanomami people was also discussed and it was decided that reliable information about the Venezuelan side of their land should be made public to avoid the artificiality of dividing them into two nationalities. The problems which affect the Yanomami are not confined to one side of an international frontier. To provide the CCPY with information on the Venezuelan Yanomami, Dr Nelly Arvelo-Jimenez, an eminent anthropologist from that country has joined CCPY as an honorary member. Other decisions taken at the assembly: sectorial committees will be set up to look at themes relating to education, the environment and intellectual property.

.

Enlarging the number of directors to reinvigorate CCPY

At the assembly it was decided to increase the number of directors as a way of revitalizing projects already underway and setting up new ones, still in the planning phase. "It's absolutely essential to increase the number of CCPY directors by bringing in highly qualified professionals in the various areas in which the organisation is involved", declared the new president in the document quoted above. There are now sixteen directors, including the six new ones who assumed their places during the meeting in Brasilia. They are:

Maria Jussara Gomes Gruber, coordinator of the Ticuna Education Project, who has a long experience in indigenous education and is a well known advocate of Ticuna art;

Jô Cardoso de Oliveira, general coordinator of Studies and Research at FUNAI, with a lot of experience in indigenous intellectual property and image rights plus administrative experience, having worked in FAP and in the Forum of Non-governmental organisations in Brasilia;

Ana Valéria de Araújo Leitão, lawyer, is a member of ISA- Socioenvironmental Institute, and has specialised in the question of indigenous intellectual property rights;

Henyo Trindade Barretto Filho, , anthropologist at the University of Brasilia, whose doctoral thesis was on Brazil's environmental policy;

George de Cerqueira Leite Zarur, anthropologist, legislative adviser to the Chamber of Deputies, has advised CCPY on the demarcation question; recently he briefed congressman Fernando Gabeira, the committee rapporteur, for his report on fellow congressman Jair Bolsanaro's proposed bill to annul the demarcation of the Yanomami area;

Aurélio Vírgilio Veiga Rios, federal prosecutor, has accompanied the demarcation process of the Yanomami area very closely and been of enormous help to the indigenous cause.

The CVs of the new directors are available at the CCPY office in Brasilia. If you want more information, please contact us at the following address:

ccpydf@uol.com.br

 


A LETTER FROM DAVI KOPENAWA TO THE AMERICAN COMPANY WHICH WANTS TO EXPLOIT THE INTERNET DOMAIN YANOMAMI.COM

Last month, when trying to register a domain name for the Yanomami people, CCPY discovered that www.yanomami.com had already been claimed by an American company, which specializes in claiming domains on the internet. The company are now demanding US$25,000 for it. Told of the situation, Yanomami leader Davi Kopenawa wrote this letter to company director Mercedes Meier:

" Demini, 19th September 2000

Ms Mercedes Meier, I, Davi Yanomami, am sending this message to you, a member of a non-indigenous society, a member of American society, because we have discovered on the Internet that you are using the name of the Yanomami people, without knowing anything about us, about the life we live in our villages.
We do not trust you. We do not know you. I want you to stop using the Yanomami name. You did not ask authorization, before using our name, the name of the Yanomami.

I, Davi Kopenawa, am disgusted that the name of my people is up for sale for US$25,000. The Yanomami name is not for sale. Yanomami is the name of a very ancient people. We want you to respect the name of the Yanomami. We do not want another problem. We already have enough problems in Brazil. So this is my word to the non-indigenous society: respect and understand.

Davi Kopenawa Yanomami "

 

.

CCPY'S NEW EXECUTIVE COUNCIL

The new council, chosen during the annual assembly on 1st August 2000, consists of:

  • Alcida Ramos, chairperson;
  • Carlos Alberto Ricardo, vice-chair;
  • Bruce Albert, Carlo Zacquini e Jussara Gruber.

 

.

BILL TO ALLOW MINING IN INDIAN LANDS MAKING ITS WAY THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN CONGRESS

PL 1610/96 is a bill to open up indigenous lands to mining, which was presented by senator Romero Juca of the PSDB party in Roraima. It has already been approved by the Senate and amended by the Chamber of Deputies, and is now in the committee stage. It is being examined by the Committee for Consumer Defence, Environment and Minorities with Flavio Derzi of the PMDB party in Mato Grosso do Sul as the rapporteur. Once it is approved there, the bill will then go to the Committee for Constitution and Justice, and then to the floor of the Chamber for final approval.

 

.


Lannan Foundation Announces its 2000 Prize for Cultural Freedom to Claudia Andujar, Brazilian Photographer and Human Rights Advocate

Lannan Foundation is pleased to announce that it has awarded its 2000 Prize for Cultural Freedom to Claudia Andujar, Brazilian photographer and human rights advocate.

A $250,000 grant will be allocated between Comissão Pró-Yanomami-CCPY, a Brazilian non-profit organization established to support and defend the life, rights, culture and land of the Yanomami people of the Amazon Basin in Northern Brazil, and another not-for-profit organization that will be created with the Yanomami for their benefit. The gift will be made in honor of the work of Claudia Andujar, a founding member of CCPY.

According to Foundation President J. Patrick Lannan, Jr., "Claudia Andujar has sacrificed her own personal welfare to protect the human rights, land rights and health of the Yanomami people. Lannan Foundation is proud to honor an activist who has worked so tirelessly to achieve social justice and cultural freedom for a group of people often discounted and ignored by those in power."

The Prize for Cultural Freedom was established to recognize people whose extraordinary and courageous work celebrates the human right to freedom of imagination, inquiry, and expression. As defined by the foundation, cultural freedom is the right of individuals and communities to define and protect valued and diverse ways of life currently threatened by globalization.

Lannan Foundation
www.lannan.org

.

 

BRAZILIAN SENATE APPROVES ILO CONVENTION
ON INDIAN RIGHTS

After seven years of comings and goings, the Brazilian Senate has approved the ratification of ILO Convention 169 on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries. The convention recognises the right of indigenous peoples to live and develop themselves as differentiated peoples, according to their own standards. It recognises indigenous rights to land and natural resources, as well as equal access to social welfare. It has taken nine years to get the Convention through both houses of the Brazilian Congress because of the delays caused by Amazon parliamentarians who did not want Brazil to commit itself to signing an international treaty which recognised indigenous rights.

Pressure from military sources also led to the introduction of an amendment which conditions certain articles of the Convention to the Brazilian Constitution, although ILO conventions are meant to be approved in their integrity, without alterations by individual countries.

This attempt to amend an international convention, according to ISA, the Socio-environmental Institution, could prove embarassing to Brazil, although in the Senate itself there are divided opinions about whether the admendment means the Convention now has to return to the Chamber of Deputies for approval.

Source: Marco Antonio Goncalves ISA/DF 8/12/00
www.socioambiental.org

 

.

Abel Barros Lima, founding member of CCPY, dies of heart disease.

ABEL BARROS DE LIMA, born in 1929 in the Brazilian state of Alagoas, lived most of his life in Sao Paulo. He died in 2000, aged 71. Abel studied law and postgraduate Social Sciences. However he made a career as a businesman. He married anthropologist Carmem Junqueira who introduced him to the fight for the Brazilian Indians. As a result he became intensively involved in indigenous questions for the rest of his life.

He was, for a time, Administrative Director of CEBRAPE, one of Brazil's leading independent research institutions. Later, together with Carmen, he administered a project among the Kaingang Indians of Southern Brazil and travelled to the Xingu River Region. When the CCPY was being set up he offered his services as administrator and became one of its founder members. He took part in the decision making process during the early years of the Commission. It was his idea to invite Senator Severo Gomes, a friend of the couple, to visit the Yanomami. The Senator became an influential spokesman for the demarcation of their area.

Abel was a communicative man, intellectually very well prepared, who had a deep interest in social problems. Although he had retired from active work with the CCPY several years ago, those who knew Abel remember him with deep affection.

 

 




DARKNESS IN EL DORADO
How Scientists and Journalists Devastated the Amazon
By Patrick Tierney Norton. 417 pp. $27.95

Guilty not as charged. Well before it reached the bookstores, Patrick Tierney's Darkness in El Dorado set off a flurry of publicity and electronic debate over its allegations that, at about the same time American soldiers were carrying out search-and-destroy missions in the jungles of Vietnam, American scientists were doing something like research-and-destroy by knowingly spreading disease in the jungles of Amazonia. On closer examination, the alleged scientific horror has turned out, on closer examination, to be something less than that, even as it was always the lesser part of Tierney's book. By far the greater part is the story, sufficiently notorious in its own right, of the well-known anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon: of his work among the Yanomami people of Venezuela and his fame among the science tribes of America.

 

_____Click here to read the review at all_____

 

.

 

CIR´s MANIFEST

Setting up of a Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry (CPI) to investigate the demarcation of indigenous lands in the Amazon - another way to obstruct the recognition of indigenous rights. The Indigenous Council of Roraima - CIR - is protesting at the political manoevres against constitutional indigenous rights. The attitude of Senator Mozarildo Cavalcante, who has so often made use of his parliamentary powers to support his anti-indigenous position is to be expected, but it is inadmissable that the Federal Senate should authorize the creation of a CPI against already consolidated constitutional rights.

THE REDUCTION OF INDIGENOUS LANDS IS UNCONSTITUTIONAL. In the name of the Ingarico, Macuxi, Patamona, Taurepang, Wapixana, Wai Wai and Yanomami indigenous peoples, we repudiate such aberrations against indigenous rights. Down through the years we have resisted and fought to defend indian lands. The Raposa Serra do Sol and the Yanomami Indigenous Areas, which were demarcated as continuous areas, are not a privilege, THEY ARE A MINIMAL GOVERNMENT ACT to apply constitutional norms and recognize original rights.

The only "ERROR" and also a crime, would be if parliamentarians decided against the Constitution. Instead of spending public money by setting up CPIs with political ends, the Federal Senate should intervene on behalf of the ratification of the Raposa Serra do Sol area and introduce measures for the protection of indigenous rights.

For the Indigenous Peoples of Roraima

INIDIGENOUS COUNCIL OF RORAIMA

.


UNETHICAL AMERICAN RESEARCH PROVOKES DEBATE AND MAY LEAD THE YANOMAMI TO SUE THE U.S GOVERNMENT

CCPY president, anthropologist Alcida Ramos, was the main speaker at a forum on "Science, Ethics and Power" organised by Michigan University's doctorate programme in Anthropology and History on 9th March 2001. The forum debated the repercussion of articles published in the international, US and Brazilian press on the research carried out by James Neel, geneticist and Michigan University researcher, with the Yanomami in the 60s and 70s. Neel's research was financed by the AEC, the Atomic Energy Commission. The articles criticised the anti-ethical behaviour of the geneticist, who died last year. With his collaborators, who included the anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon, Neel collected thousands of samples of Yanomami blood in Brazil and Venezuela, exchanging them for merchandise, without obtaining informed consent from the Yanomami themselves. These blood samples are now held at laboratories in Pennsylvania and Michigan, where they are being used for new research within the Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP), opening up the possibility of the future patenting of Yanomami genetic material. James Neel's research may become the object of a lawsuit to be brought by the Yanomami people against the American government (AEC is now part of the U.S. Energy Department). The Yanomami could thus request reparations for the damage caused by the collection of blood samples without their informed consent and demand the signing of an agreement with the HGDP before their DNA can be used. This information was supplied by anthropologist Bruce Albert, member of CCPY's Executive Council, during a round table organised via internet by anthropologist Robert Borofsky, of the University of Hawaii. The debates, which are still underway, involve six anthropologists from different countries. The texts of the debates will be made available to the public on an internet site to be opened in June, after the third round table session.

For further information please contact us at:
 ccpydf@uol.com.br


 ... . General | Conflicts | Intercultural Education| Environment | Yanomami Health