Indigeneity in the Time of Coronavirus
Beneath the lair and deep forestry of the Amazon, teetering on the borders between Brazil and Venezuela, lies an old land belonging to the indigenous Yanomami population. Now reduced to only 38 000, these people occupy a territory that is two times the size of Switzerland. Yet why is the modern world so reluctant to recognise indigenous land and the right to self-determination of these people? Why do we fail to acknowledge societal life outwith the boundaries of civilisation, and refuse to accept tribalism as a valid possibility?
The ancestral land of these people and their everlasting belonging is currently being put into question again, by the Brazilian congress which is now debating the proposal of a mining bill in order to allow large-scale mining on indigenous lands.
In the times of an epidemic, the dangers that may come to indigenous tribes from this contact with gold miners could be crucial to their survival. The Yanomami came into intensive contact with outsiders who settled close by in the 1940s, bringing the first epidemics of flu and measles to local populations. In the 1970s, a road was built with no previous notice to the inhabitants and brought deforestation, disease and alcohol, as well as tensions with colonists and cattle ranchers. In the following decade, the gold rush era brought 40 000 gold miners on Yanomami land, ending with 20% of the population wiped out in 7 years and the final delineation of the ‘Yanomami park’ in 1992. However, although the area was recognised and only two miners were jailed and charged with genocide, the illegal gold mining continues to penetrate the Yanomami land and consequently harm their right and legitimacy to the earth itself. The tribes living in the heart of the Amazon are also some of the very few now personally committed to protecting and defending the great biodiversity of the region, that is being constantly threatened by the hungry greed of mankind.
In the words of shaman Davi Kopenawa Yanomami:
‘Mining will only destroy nature. It will only destroy the streams and the rivers and kill the fish and kill the environment — and kill us. And bring in diseases which never existed in our land.’
With the murder of the earth, comes the murder of people. This logical consequence seems to be overlooked by those who are instead moved by a logic of profit and possession. Many illegal miners (known as garimpeiros), loggers and invasors are now occupying the Amazon territory in the name of these principles and have been morally justified by the laxness and complicity of the Brazilian government.
‘’The garimpeirosare like measles, they don’t want to leave”, his son Dario Kopenawa says. But what is left to do when the occupiers not only are a disease, but bring new ones with them? Since the recent epidemic of Coronavirus and the exacerbation of anti-indigenous legislations, not only the Yanomami, but all tribes in the Amazonas are facing this threat. When humanity fails to recognise the bounding principle that is the earth, wrapping us all together with the cordon of brotherhood and solidarity, we are bound to betray our humanity.
If a population not only has lived on the land throughout its history, but is also spiritually connected and deeply dependent upon it, what right should any man have to rip this away from them?
The problem is a matter of legitimacy. When we decide to justify our existence as a civilisation and not recognise any other that may not be inserted in the tissue of the world in the same manner as we, we fail to understand the many paths of human development towards progress or well being. If we decide to press each social entity against our own, and measure their virtue or value in terms of our standard, then we fail to recognise not just the diversity, but the plurality of expressions that come with human creativeness. Whenever we decide to view something as the ‘’other’’, up against one’s untouchable standpoint, rather than understand the plurality of human existence, we fail to find a bridge on which we may be able to find a common language.
In a dislocated society such as ours, for instance, that is dominated by speed and the teleportative principle of spreading one’s presence throughout space and against the flow of time, making one’s being predominant and omnipresent, the connection with the earth has become secondary to that with the things that lie upon it. A civilisation that flees its land to enjoy free time during summer, that is unaware of where its food comes from, that does not recognise native plants and their fruits, has lost contact with the environmental roots that are our most precious inheritance. Only in the materialisation of space in fact, we can create meaning that looks back historically, and project it onto the future.
Our present moment keeps us inevitably tied with our earth; life is the umbilical cord that links us to our environment. In a society that has forgotten the value of a fist of fertile soil, the stories behind a plate of tomatoes, the care and warmth poured into a glass of wine, space loses its meaning as well as time. We must be willing to redimension our sensitivity to the land and reconsider the true value of the commitment and effort that lie in small things. When we learn to appreciate the origins and labour that hide behind each thing, we are open to reconnecting with our ground.
