The Yanomami are a living people currently threatened by mining and deforestation

Evidence

For the 10-year-old (Ages 9–11): The Yanomami remind us of something crucial as we near the end of this curriculum: that the Indigenous peoples whose stories we’ve read are not relics of a vanished past, but LIVING cultures, many of them facing grave threats RIGHT NOW. The Yanomami — one of the largest relatively isolated Amazonian peoples, with a sophisticated layered cosmology and a tradition of shamans (the xapiri) who work to keep the world in balance — are today defending their rainforest home against illegal mining, disease, and deforestation that threaten their very survival. Their great shaman and spokesman Davi Kopenawa has spoken powerfully to the world about the danger of destroying the forest. — , A Year of World Stories, 10763

Categorization

• SEED: Angle: a piece on contemporary indigenous environmental defenders — Kopenawa and the Yanomami as case study — tying traditional cosmology to current survival.