Amazon Indians Can Be Saved

Stephen Cory @ Survival Intenational - May 2012 marks the twentieth birthday of Brazil’s Yanomami Park. It’s the largest area of protected rainforest in the world; it’s also the best reply to critics who say that efforts to protect tribal peoples are futile.

The park saved the Yanomami and was secured with modest resources: a handful of people with conviction and public support more than made up for their lack of big bucks. Similar victories can, indeed must, be grasped elsewhere with equally modest ingredients.

The Yanomami, who straddle the Brazil/Venezuela border, are a relatively typical Amazon people except in one respect – their numerical size. Their many ‘sub-groups’ go by a variety of names (‘Yanomami’ is simply the most widely recognized by outsiders) and constitute about 19,000 individuals in Brazil and 13,000 in Venezuela. This is some fifty times bigger than most Amazon Indian tribes, and the Yanomami are amongst the largest of all South American peoples who live comparatively isolated from mainstream society.  Read more.

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