I. CASE BACKGROUND
1. Abstract
The intersection between human rights, conflict, and the environment is an important topic of discussion, especially with regards to how the destruction of the environment impacts indigenous communities and threatens their human rights to property and a healthy environment. One of the most important examples of environmental destruction and the violation of human rights is the case of the Yanomami people in the Amazon. Since the 1970s, the physical and cultural survival of the Yanomami people has been threatened by gold mining, deforestation, and disease. This case study examines the way in which the destruction of Yanomami communities in the Amazon constitutes a serious human rights violation and a grave environmental crisis.
2. Description
2.1 The Yanomami People
The Yanomami are an ancient indigenous people living in the Amazon regions of Brazil and Venezuela. Today, there are approximately 26,000 Yanomami living along the Brazilian-Venezuelan border in the fertile lands of the Orinoco and Amazon Rivers. Like most Brazilian indigenous people, the Yanomami are “semi-nomadic, agricultural laborers, or hunters-gatherers.” Traditionally considered to be an isolated peoples, the Yanomami are divided among four subgroups, according to linguistic differentiation. The name “Yanomami” was given by anthropologists and derived from an indigenous expression “yanõmami thëpë” which signifies “human beings.” The Yanomami are also known for their close relationship to nature, relying on their territory for subsistence purposes and attributing cultural significance and myths to their surroundings.
According to anthropologists, the Yanomami (as a distinct linguistic group) have inhabited the region around the Orinoco and Parima Rivers for the past 1,000 years. Beginning in the early 1800s, the Yanomami began migrating from the Parima mountain region to nearby lowlands. As a relatively isolated indigenous group, the Yanomami had contact only with other local indigenous groups. It was not until the early 1900s, that the Yanomami had direct contact with outsiders including: hunters, soldiers, evangelists and missionaries. To this day, however, the Yanomami remain a highly self-sufficient group, relying on the natural resources of the Amazon for physical and spiritual sustenance.
2.2 Violence Against the Yanomami
For decades the fertile and mineral-rich territories of the Yanomami have been exploited for gold mining, timber production, and development purposes by intruders. The invasion of the Amazon by private, commercial, and government-sponsored actors represents one of today’s greatest environmental challenges. Home to more than half of Brazil’s indigenous population, the Amazon Rainforest also supports some of the greatest bio-diversity on Earth. According to Greenpeace International, the Amazon is considered to be the “most diverse ecosystem on Earth,” the site of more than “60,000 plant species, 1,000 bird species, and more than 300 mammal species.” For years though, the survival of the Amazon has been threatened by deforestation, mining for precious resources like gold and diamonds, construction work, and wildfires. However, the destruction of the Amazon not only endangers the survival of wildlife in the forest, but the lives and rights of the indigenous people for whom it is home.
In the mid-1970s, the Brazilian government began construction of the Northern Circumferential Highway as part of the National Integration Plan, cutting through large portions of Yanomami territory. This intrusion into indigenous land resulted in a major epidemic; nearly 20% of the existing Yanomami population, roughly 1,500 people, were killed by new diseases brought into the area by workers from which they had no immunity, such as malaria, tuberculosis, and smallpox. Numerous other Yanomami were killed by armed Brazilian gold miners.
Throughout the 1980s, the violence on Yanomami communities escalated as heavily armed garimpeiros, or Brazilian gold miners, continued to invade Yanomami territory and were often met with resistance by the indigenous people. There are even several cases in which the Yanomami have retaliated against invasion of their territory, killing the miners themselves.
In response to the invasion of Yanomami land and the violence inflicted upon the indigenous peoples, the Brazilian government made feeble attempts to protect Yanomami communities. In fact, only a small fraction of the existing Yanomami lands were demarcated; according to one study by the American Anthropological Association, by 1990, only about 30% of the original Yanomami territory was protected from illegal intrusion. The remaining 70% of the originally recognized area of Yanomami territory was essentially expropriated from Yanomami control, in order to make the land accessible to exploitation by the miners.
In the 1990s, a series of murders were committed by gold miners and lumberman, all triggered by land disputes. The Indian Missionary Council (CIMI) in Brazil also has reported numerous attempted killings, beatings, and illegal arrests of the Yanomami natives by intruders. While a number of other human rights NGOs, such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have documented various attacks on the Yanomami people, the total number of Yanomami deaths remains unknown. One study by researchers at the University of Maryland, Minorities at Risk, estimates that over 100 Yanomami have been murdered since the discovery of oil in indigenous lands.
Disease is another important consequence of intrusion into Yanomami land. It is estimated between 1988 and 1990 some 1,500 Yanomami, approximately 20 per cent of the population, died of malaria brought into the region by garimpeiros. While not typically considered under the umbrella of violent conflict, the introduction of diseases to which the Yanomami people were not immune is one serious effect of allowing outsiders searching for environmental resources and violating indigenous rights into their territory.
For all practical purposes, this study measures conflict as the number of Yanomami known deaths caused by either violent attack or diseases initiated by Brazilian gold miners. While it is known that the garimpeiros have been found guilty of beating and attacking the Yanomami people, there is virtually no way to determine how many attacks have occurred in recent years. Yet even the Yanomami death toll (whether by disease or violent conflict) is a limited indicator of conflict. First, it is necessary to consider the cultural differences between the indigenous Yanomami people and Brazilian authorities that make accurate reporting of casualties of environmental conflict nearly impossible. The difficulty in traveling to isolated regions occupied by the Yanomami people, overcoming legal restrictions from entering into their territory, and communicating with them is understated. As a cultural tradition, the Yanomami cremate their dead; this makes it increasingly difficult for authorities to determine the exact number of those killed and the specific nature of the deaths.
Similarly, measuring the impact of disease on the Yanomami population is nearly impossible. First, the total population of the Yanomami must be known in order to judge its relativity. Secondly, as the Yanomami cremate their dead, the numbers reported by anthropologists and human rights organizations may only represent a small fraction of deaths.
Human rights related NGO’s, such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, while valuable sources of information, only provide specific information on reported cases. Groups that handle indigenous rights in particular, such as the Pro-Yanomami Commission and the National Indian Foundation (FUNAI), are similarly limited in their reporting capabilities and are only a relatively recent phenomenon as reporting of human rights violations of indigenous people in Brazil did not even begin until the mid 1980s. Even legal instruments, such as the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, only provide data regarding individual cases that have been presented to the court. The numbers used in this study, therefore only reflect reported data from the mid-1970s to the present.
2.3 Specific Incidents of Conflict
The following are descriptions of 32 known cases of Yanomami killings by Brazilian garimpeiros as reported to international human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Links to the specific source have been referenced for more information:
1973 – After construction of the Northern Circumferential Highway begins, about 20% of Yanomami Indians (roughly 1,500) are killed by new diseases brought into the area by workers from which they had no immunity, and many others are killed by armed miners and settlers. (Inter-American Commission on Human Rights).
August 1987 – Attacks on the Yanomami become known after miners invade the Succurus area. A conflict over a mine on Yanomami traditional land leads to the deaths of four Indians. The conflict was initiated when a group of Yanomami, including women and children, had gone to the mine to disarm a group of miners. (Amnesty International).
May 1988 – A Yanomami man from the Hakomatheri group, living near the Venezuelan border, is hospitalized with a serious gunshot wound inflicted by armed miners. The man’s two-year-old daughter had died from her wounds and two other Indians were reportedly seriously wounded. (Amnesty International)
Nov 1988 – A 13 year old Yanomami boy is shot by a garimpeiro near the Paa-piu village. (Amnesty International)
June 1989 – A Yanomami is murdered by heavily armed garimpeiros near the Orinoco and Mucajai rivers in the Brazilian state of Roraima. The killing is witnessed by other Yanomamis who flee and report the incident to police in Bõa Vista (Amnesty International)
August 1989 – Two Yanomami women and a child are killed by a group of miners near a restricted airstrip after they had challenged the miners’ presence (Amnesty International)
September 1990 – Lourenço Yekuana, the 65 year old leader of the Yekuana, a sub-group of the Yanomami in Auaris, and his son Albert Konaaka, are both killed in a conflict with miners. (Auaris is close to the Venezuelan border in the the Brazilian state of Roraima). (Amnesty International)
February 1992 – 25 year-old Yaduce Yanomami is shot by a group of garimpeiros near the village of Paa-piu, after which Yanomami from the village chase the garimpeiros and kill two of them. (Amnesty International)
July 1993 – 16 Yanomami are killed in the Haximu territory on the Venezuelan/Brazilian border by Brazilian garimpeiros. (Human Rights Watch)
Nov 1997 – 3 Yanomami are killed by miners in the Brazilian state of Roraima.(Amnesty International).
2.4 Human Rights Implications
Theoretically, the rights of the Yanomami people to ownership of their territory and the integrity of Yanomami land and traditions have been guaranteed by the 1988 Brazilian Constitution; in particular, the Chapter on Indigenous Rights states that:
Article 231. Recognition is hereby granted to the Indians’ social organization, customs, languages, beliefs and traditions and their original rights to the land which they originally occupied, and it shall be the purview of the Union to demarcate those lands and to protect and ensure respect for all of the Indians’ possessions.
11 The lands traditionally occupied by the Indians are those on which they have established a permanent residence; those utilized for their productive activities; those essential for preservation of the environmental resources necessary for their well-being, and those needed for their physical and cultural reproduction in accordance with their usages, customs and traditions.
21 The lands traditional occupied by the Indians are earmarked for their permanent possession, and they are entitled to the exclusive usufruct of the resources of the soil, the rivers and the lakes existing on such lands.
31 Utilization of the water resources–including the energy potential, the search for and extraction of mineral resources on indigenous lands–shall be made effective only when authorized by the National Congress, after hearing the communities affected, and those communities shall be assured of participation in the results of such exploitation, in the manner established by law.
41 The lands to which this Article refers are inalienable and not subject to disposal, and the rights to such lands are imperceptible.
51 The removal of indigenous groups from their lands is prohibited, except by referendum of the National Congress in the event of a catastrophe or epidemic which places their population at risk, or in the interest of the country’s sovereignty following the deliberation of the National Congress, and guaranteeing, in any case, the immediate return [of such groups] when the risk is no longer present.
61 Any acts having as a purpose the occupation or domain and possession of the lands referred to in this Article, and the exploitation of the natural resources of the soil, the rivers or lakes existing on such lands shall be null and void and shall produce no juridical effects, except in the relevant public interest of the Union as provided in the complementary law; and such nullity and extinguishment shall not generate a right to indemnification or action against the Union, except in accordance with the law and with respect to the benefits derived from the occupancy [thereof] in good faith.
A similar protection, regarding healthcare of all people, exists in Venezuelan law. According to the Venezuelan Constitution, health is considered to be a “fundamental social right; an obligation by the state to guarantee health as part of the right to life. All people have the right to health care and sanitation (Tit. 3, Art 83).”
However it is important to note that several problems exist with respect to the efficacy of Brazilian law protecting indigenous rights. In practice, only a fraction of indigenous lands have been properly demarcated by Brazilian authorities. According to a recent report by Amnesty International, of 580 officially recognized indigenous territories in Brazil, 340 have been ratified, while 139 are still awaiting identification, the first stage in the process. In order for Yanomami rights to their territory to be fully implemented, the Brazilian government must authorize the transfer of land. This procedure, however, is highly bureaucratic, requiring identification, delimitation, demarcation, ratification and registration of lands. According to Amnesty International, “the procedure has proved painfully slow, taking years, if not decades, for claims to be settled. FUNAI [The agency responsible for carry-out the process]has long been beleaguered by under-funding, corruption and internal problems, and consistently states that it lacks the money and manpower to carry out pending demarcations.
Protection of indigenous rights, it should be mentioned, is not an issue limited exclusively to the Brazilian government. Internationally, it is important to note that a number of important legal precedents exist in order to protect the rights of indigenous communities: the 1948 UN Declaration of Human Rights, the 1994 UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the 1996 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, and the 1972 Stockholm Declaration on the Human Environment.
5. Actors: Brazil, Venezuela, and the Yanomami
For the past 1,000 years, the Yanomami people have lived in the Amazon and the regions around the Orinoco River (in what is today known as Brazil and Venezuela). At present there are about 26,000 Yanomami people living in over 150 groups in the Amazon region of Brazil, particularly in the states of Roraima and Amazonas, and in portions of Venezuela.
4. Location: Brazil and Venezuela
The Yanomami occupy an area of about 900 km extending along the Brazilian-Venezuelan border. Strategically, the region in which the Yanomami habitat is known for valuable deposits of gold and other precious minerals and timber reserves.
3. Duration: 30 years
For the last 30 years, the survival of the Yanomami people has been jeopardized by illegal Brazilian gold miners, known as garimpeiros in Portuguese, and commercial loggers. [read the rest of the report]
By John Canfield, Samantha LaSpina, Christie Winsor [Source]
Librarian: Sue Ann Brainard
Chagnon, Napoleon
1997 Yanomano: The Fierce People. 5th ed. Harcourt Brace College Publishers, New York.
Abstract
The Yanomano 5th edition is based on research conducted by Napoleon Chagnon, an anthropologist who studied the Yanomamo tribe extensively. This tribe consists of 20,000 individuals that are indigenous to the Amazon Rainforest, located between Venezuela and Brazil in South America. This ethnography focuses on the day-to-day routines that all members of the Yanomamo follow. Alliances and feasting are two of the most important pillars of relationships between villages. These social interactions can be very complex, with both parties seeking more gain than loss. These relationships also make it difficult to decipher the Yanomamo kinship. Due to the complicated nature of their language, the names of people are quite abstract, making their genealogy hard to trace. The vocabulary of the Yanomamo is very intricate, yet they have no written language. Instead, their stories and myths are passed down by word-of-mouth between multiple generations. The Yanomamo are known as “the fierce people” because of their frequent engagement in violent activities with neighboring tribes. One theory, popularized by Marvin Harris, speculates that these conflicts are caused by a lack of protein. However, Chagnon insists that the root of these conflicts, and the Yanomamo’s competitive nature, is their desire to own women for means of reproduction. Strong abstract.
Figure 1: Location of the Yanomamo (Chagnon 1997: Fig.1)
Source:
Figure 2: Napolean Chagnon with a member of a Yanomamo tribe (Chagnon 1997: Fig 2)
Figure 3: Raiders lining up at dawn prior to departing for an attack on an enemy. (Chagnon 1997: Fig. 3) (page 197)
Figure 4: The four parallel layers of the Yanomamo cosmos. (Chagnon 1997: Fig. 4) (page 100)
Figure 5: Yanomamo social structure (Chagnon 1997: Fig. 5) (Page 142)
Cultural setting
The Yanomamo are a foraging horticulturalist society located in the Amazon Rainforest in-between Venezuela and Brazil. The Yanomano’s main source of food comes from plantains and bananas that they garden and gather through the use of a simple agriculture technique called slash-and-burn (Good 1995). Gardening and gathering these crops allows the Yanomano to settle down and procreate, and it also provides them with an essential amount of vitamins and minerals. However, due to the lack of protein, they must travel throughout the year to hunt for wild animals to get the allotted amount of fat and meat needed. (Good 1995). The total quantity of food one has gathered or hunted is always divided among members of the community. Although most of the food is shared within the kin, many members outside the family would trade crops or provide services, like sex (Gurven 2005). The amount of food one gives another shows how they value their friendship (Chagnon 1997:15)
Gardens are the life blood of the Yanomamo; without a garden it is nearly impossible to survive. Chagnon describes the controversy a sub-group faces when there is a dispute between two parties of a tribe. One of the fighting parties may be asked to leave the village and must consider how they will produce a new garden. There are a few options available for resolutions, and the appropriate one depends on how severe the dispute was. If it was a mild dispute they may consider living close for a while and going back to the old garden for food until they have established a new garden. Another option would involve moving close to an ally tribe and using their gardens until they have re-established a garden of their own. A final option is to take the roots of plantains and plant at a new location and live off of plantains until they have a place to grow permanently. In addition to gardens, the Yanomamo frequently cut down palm trees and allow grubs to grow within the fallen palm. They then harvest the grubs as a source of protein. This is as close to “domesticating” animals as the Yanomamo get.
Chagnon also describes particular social rules dealing with the gardens of a tribe. The produce from a garden may be shared with others in the tribe as each family sees fit. Tobacco, however, is rarely shared and may never be taken without permission. Within the garden, old logs or shrubbery may be placed around the area where the tobacco is grown to signify that this belongs to the owner of the garden and may not be taken without permission. Even though the tobacco is “fenced off”, it is still easily accessible. The fence is more significant as a moral reminder rather than a physical barrier.
Overview of the Ethnography
One of the many foci of the ethnography was Chagnon’s attempt to configure a kinship in order to determine individuals’ relatives. However, due to the complex social interactions within the tribes, it was nearly impossible to construct a precise kinship. By recruiting informants, Chagnon was able to understand why uncovering these relations was so problematic. A couple of these limitations involved the Yanomano’s polygamous beliefs. Men and women tend to have more than one significant other, therefore determining a child’s biological parent was difficult (Alvard 2009.) Another reason it was hard to decipher kinships kinship was due to the abstract names that members in their society had. Each member in the society had very specific, long names, so that when someone died their name was forever erased from the Yanomano’s vocabulary (Chagnon 1997:27). This was Chagnon’s most challenging obstacle to get over because members of the society would not discuss the deceased.
The Yanomamo have an intricate and advanced vocabulary compared with many cultures. Despite the fact that they have an intricate vocabulary and no written language, stories and myths have been passed down from generation to generation. The most significant of these myths is their view of the structure of the world. Contrary to many Western ideas, they Yanomamo believe in four layers of existence (see Fig. 4). The lowest of the four layers (layer 4 as depicted in Fig. 4) is where the Yanomamo are presently. This represents what Westerners would consider the life we are presently living. The third layer is where a person goes after death. In this layer, the Yanomamo believe a person continues “living”. They hunt, grow gardens, marry, and have children: it is a continuation of their present everyday life.
Also passed down through vocal stories are the legends of the jaguar. He (the jaguar) is represented a couple of ways by varying tribes. The main idea is that he is part human and part beast. He is depicted as dumb, fumbling, clumsy, yet cunning. He got a taste of human flesh and he now hunts humans. Although the Yanomamo are “the fierce people”, they fear the jaguar and fear becoming cannibals themselves.
Most importantly, the Yanomamo refer to everyone by their kinship ties with that person (Chagnon 1996:124). This social practice directly influences who is considered marriageable. Men only consider their father’s sister’s daughters or their mother’s brother’s daughters; anyone else is wholly off-limits, except in special cases (Chagnon 1996:133). Long before marriage, men and women occupy completely different roles in society. Girls work hard to help their mothers from a young age, and are married by the time of their first period, if not before. However, boys are allowed a much longer and more carefree childhood period, and do not marry until their early 20’s. They also have the opportunity to help choose who their wife (or wives) will be. The day-to-day life of the Yanomamo is straining for everyone, regardless of gender. The village rises at dawn, before the heat becomes unbearable, and works in the garden (where the dietary staple plantains are grown), until they retire midmorning. In the afternoon, the men either return to the garden or take hallucinogenic drugs, while the women work to haul firewood.
Alliances play an important role in the culture of the Yanomamo. Although the alliances each village makes are not immune to failure, or outright betrayal, they do provide a basis for exchange of women and alliances in times of war (Chagnon 1996:148). Alliances progress through three stages, and grow stronger with each. The first stage is sporadic trading, the second mutual feasting, and the last (a difficult stage to achieve because of the inherent distrust between each village) is a reciprocal exchange of women (Chagnon 1996:156).
In Chagnon’s ethnography, one feast in particular is closely examined. Years before, the village Chagnon had stayed with was weak, and attempted to augment their relationship with another village by accepting an initiation to a feast, but they were attacked, and many were killed. The village then sought refuge with another group, whom they invited to this particular feast. From the beginning, it seemed that the other group was being pointedly hostile—they arrived one week early and insisted on being fed, which is considered rude in Yanomamo society. Everything at the feast went well, each man has an opportunity to dance and show off, while everyone ate extensively, but things deteriorated when the visiting tribe refused to leave. There is no option but to have a chest- slapping fight (Chagnon 1996:178). The competition goes poorly for the hosts, and the conflict almost turns into a confrontation, but a negotiation allows avoidance of bloodshed.
As an explanation for the violence and great amount of warfare conducted among Yanomamo, Marvis Harris stated a lack of protein caused much violence (Lizot 1994). Chagnon however, has done work with the Yanomamo to monitor their protein intake and concluded they take in more protein than many people in Westernized societies. Lizot has questioned Chagnon’s techniques for collecting this data and states that he only collected data from one small tribe. Lizot also questions Harris’s theory about why they engage in so much warfare. As of yet, it is not completely clear why the Yanomamo engage in so much warfare: although the Yanomamo attribute the majority of warfare to women (Chagnon 1997).
Reception and Critique
This ethnography is one of the most well known works in the field of anthropology. However, not all response to it have been positive. Since Chagnon describes the Yanomamo as a “fierce people”, and discusses at length their primitive culture, some in Brazil blame him (and the media which sensationalized the account) for the decline of the Yanomamo people. Indeed, after Chagnon published his works, the Yanomamo began to be taken advantage of by people who had read about the tribes and thought them an easy target. This has sparked debate about whether anthropological ethnographies can be written as if in a political vacuum, where whatever is said about the people being studied cannot be used to exploit them (Booth 1989). The ethnography is generally considered very well done, however, because of its commitment to accurately describing the lives of the Yanomamo (Erikson 2005). There are many more sources on the controversies around Chagnon’s work (including a full book), but you at least found some sources.
Recent Developments
Since the 5th edition of this ethnography was written in 1997, many aspects of the Yanomamo community have changed. After the Gold Rush in Brazil in 1987, many gold miners and missionary groups had invaded the Yanomano tribes (Chagnon 1997: 204). Many Yanomano members, especially children, began to die due to diseases that the foreigners introduced to the region. Within ten years the population dramatically decreased, while the mortality rate increased (Nugent 2001). Another transformation that occurred due to the missionary groups was in the Yanomano’s lifestyle. Before the missionary groups arrived, the Yanomano people were horticulturists. They grew a variety of crops and hunted several animals in order to eat a balanced diet. Now that the Yanomamo have been introduced to the foreigners they have become more westernized. Instead of growing crops solely for themselves, they have started to grow yucca, from which flour can be made. They then trade the flour for more appealing western items, including guns. With this new form of technology, violence has increased in the community (Chagnon 1997:215).
Conclusion
The Yanomamo are a horticulturist/foraging society. Their gardens are their main supply of food, plantains being the most important. They hunt for food as well, but their largest supply of protein comes from grubs harvested from fallen palms. The Yanomamo have been regarded as the “fierce people” since Chagnon published the ethnography. Following exposure to Westernized peoples, the Yanomamo have gained access to guns, which has lead to more violence.
Dogma and Geopolitics 