The shocking images of death and destruction of the Yanomami people and their lands that recently swept the world reestablish a tragedy foretold. Illegal miners have been poisoning rivers with mercury and wrecking the Amazon rainforest for years, bringing armed violence, sexual abuse, and illnesses like tuberculosis, malaria, and COVID. And as illegal Amazon mining flourished in Brazil during Jair Bolsonaro’s regime, a grave humanitarian crisis emerged in Yanomami territory.
The Yanomami people lived in almost complete isolation from the Western world until the 1980s, when gold was found on their land. Over the decades since this discovery, some 40,000 illegal miners invaded their lands in successive waves, bringing destruction and genocidal violence.
On January 20, Brazil’s Health Ministry declared a medical emergency in the territory.
In recent weeks, dozens of Yanomami children were flown to hospitals in Boa Vista suffering from malnutrition and malaria. At least 570 Yanomami children are reported to have died of malnutrition and preventable diseases during Bolsonaro’s administration.
Since the 1990s, there have been a number of studies that raised awareness about the negative health effects that illegal gold mining has had on the Yanomami population, which consists of about 30,000 people. These studies show gold mining can be linked to tuberculosis, malaria, mercury poisoning, and malnutrition.
Historically, the Yanomami sustained themselves from the land. They eat birds, wild pigs, fish, and fruits such as bananas from gardens they tend. But gold miners have destroyed the forest. In many parts of Yanomami territory, the miners have not only interrupted but destroyed the food chain, making it impossible for the Yanomami to sustain themselves from the land, said Christina Haverkamp, a human rights activist who has been working with the Yanomami for over 30 years, in an interview for DW. “[The miners] leave bald spots and flooding where the Yanomami can’t build anything. In these areas, all the wild game have fled and the fish are poisoned by mercury,” she said.
Last April a report published by the Hutukara Yanomami Association revealed that illegal miners operating inside the Yanomami Indigenous Territory were coercing Indigenous girls as young as 11 into sex work. “Many miners are enticing teenage girls and women in the Yanomami communities. There are 11-, 12- and 13-year-old girls being bribed to stay in the tent with them. They offer food, clothes, and work materials [in exchange for sex],” the investigation found.
Another report “Yanomami Under Attack” published last year by the Socio-Environmental Institute (ISA) found that during the four years of Bolsonaro’s government, the death of Yanomami children aged five or younger jumped 29% compared to the previous government. The report also found that the region was responsible for half of Brazil’s malaria cases and that more than 3,000 children were malnourished.
Amazon Watch has repeatedly denounced the impacts of illegal mining in the Amazon and on Indigenous peoples and their territories, including the increase of violence and destruction within Yanomami territory. In 2020, alongside several NGOs, the organization called for global action to demand that the Brazilian government remove the illegal miners inside the Yanomami Territory with the campaign Miners Out, Covid Out. During the COVID humanitarian crisis, Amazon Watch allocated emergency funds to several Indigenous peoples, including the Yanomami, who were provided emergency relief, oxygen concentrators, and health supplies.
In 2021 and 2022, we also partnered with the Brazilian health organization Expedicionários da Saúde, creating an Emergency Fund for Aid to Indigenous Peoples. We sent the Yanomami food baskets, supported expeditions with volunteer health professionals, and provided rapid tests for Covid-19 and malaria and protection and safety equipment and medicines, as active partners in solidarity efforts to support the Yanomami during the Bolsonaro regime’s genocidal tenure.
In addition to direct support for the Yanomami, we also drew a line between the crimes being committed on their lands and the complicity of global actors. Last September, Amazon Watch published Blood Gold, an exposé in partnership with the Association of Brazil’s Indigenous Peoples (APIB) showing that the supply chains of technology, electronics, and automotive giants could be tainted by Brazilian gold illegally mined in Amazonian Indigenous territories.
Among its first acts, the recently-inaugurated government of President Lula da Silva initiated operations aimed at dismantling extensive illegal gold mining activities in Yanomami Indigenous Land by driving out tens of thousands of illegal miners. Brazil’s Ministry of Health is simultaneously leading a major operation in parallel to address the Yanomami health crisis.
While these moves are of critical importance, the Yanomami are not the only Amazonian Indigenous community who have had their territory invaded, their water and fish contaminated, and their forest destroyed by illegal mining. The Munduruku and Kayapó peoples also suffer severely from illegal mining. Now that many miners are fleeing Yanomami territory, there is a good chance that unless the Brazilian government moves swiftly to stamp out this activity across the Amazon, the same miners will invade other Indigenous territories in search of gold and other precious minerals. Lula has promised to end illegal mining, and we will continue to apply pressure together with our allies to ensure this happens in all Indigenous territories.
The terrorizing of the Yanomami and other Indigenous peoples and the destruction of their lands by criminal miners must not only be stamped out by Brazilian authorities; there must be guarantees – for the future of the Amazon and its peoples – that these brutal and unacceptable practices will never again be allowed to flourish. This work ahead of us is not exclusively in the hands of the Brazilian government. It is led, as it has been historically, by the resistance of Indigenous peoples in defense of their lands, cultures, and well-being, which demands our collective solidarity and ongoing support.
