Ayoreo Indians protest at government inaction over illegal deforestation - News from Survival

Details: Published on Friday, 26 September 2014 11:20; Written by editor

Ayoreo Indians protest at government inaction over illegal deforestation

Ayoreo Indians protest against Yaguareté Porã S.A. which is rapidly destroying their forest home for beef production. © GAT

Relatives of the last uncontacted Indians outside Amazonia held a protest on Wednesday to demand the urgent protection of their land, which is being destroyed by cattle ranchers.

Brazilian firm Yaguareté Porã S.A. is destroying the last refuge of the Ayoreo-Totobiegosode Indians in Paraguay to make way for cattle that is sold for beef to European and Russian markets.

Uncontacted members of the tribe have been living on the run as their homes are bulldozed by the ranchers.

Many Ayoreo have already been forced out of the forest, and are now being wiped out by diseases like flu and measles to which they have no resistance.

Members of the tribe arrived outside the Attorney General’s office in Filadelfia in northern Paraguay to demand official intervention to stop Yaguarete from continuing its destructive work.

Satellite images have caught the company red-handed illegally clearing the Ayoreo’s forest home in the Chaco. The area now has the fastest rate of deforestation in the world.

The Ayoreo handed in a document to the Attorney General urging it to uphold Paraguay’s constitution that guarantees the Ayoreo ownership of their ancestral land.

Yaguarete owner Marcelo Bastos Ferraz has refused to return the land to its indigenous owners, or to stop his rapid deforestation.

Survival has launched an advertising campaign warning Paraguay’s biggest beef market, Russia, of the dangers its imports pose to the lives of the vulnerable uncontacted Indians.

Read this online: http://www.survivalinternational.org/news/10443

Amazon Indian protests outside Jimmy Nelson photo exhibition in London

Nixiwaka Yawanawá protested against the 'outrageous' exhibition of Jimmy Nelson's work at London's Atlas Gallery today, wearing his ceremonial headdress.© Sophie Pinchetti/Survival

An Amazon Indian protested outside the exhibition of controversial photographer Jimmy Nelson’s work “Before They Pass Away” at London’s Atlas Gallery today.

Nelson’s work has been attacked by indigenous peoples around the world, as well as Survival International – the global movement for tribal peoples’ rights – for portraying a false and damaging picture of tribal peoples.

Nixiwaka Yawanawá from Acre state in Brazil handed a letter to the gallery and said, “As a tribal person I feel offended by Jimmy Nelson’s work ’Before They Pass Away’. It’s outrageous! We are not passing away but struggling to survive. Industrialized society is trying to destroy us in the name of ‘progress’, but we will keep defending our lands and contributing to the protection of the planet.”

Read the letter to London’s Atlas Gallery (pdf, 10MB)

Famed photographer Jimmy Nelson's work 'Before They Pass Away' has been attacked by tribal peoples around the world.© Jimmy Nelson/teNeues

While Nelson claims his work is “ethnographic fact”, Survival Director Stephen Corry denounces it as a photographer’s fantasy which bears little relationship either to how the people pictured look now, or how they ever appeared. Nelson’s subjects are supposed to be “passing away”, but no mention is made of the genocidal violence they are being subjected to.

The photos of Waorani girls from Ecuador, for example, portray them shorn of the clothes that contacted Waorani routinely wear, and wearing “fig” leaves to protect their modesty, which they have never done (previous generations of Waorani women wore a simple waist string).

Nelson portrays Waorani girls unclothed with a 'fig' leaf.© Jimmy Nelson/teNeues

The Dani of West Papua are wrongly called the “the most dreaded head-hunting tribe of Papua”. But no mention is made of the killings, torture and intimidation they have suffered under the Indonesian occupation since 1963.

Papuan tribal leader Benny Wenda said, “What Jimmy Nelson says about us is not true. My people, the Dani people, were never headhunters, it was never our tradition. The real headhunters are the Indonesian military who have been killing my people. My people are still strong and we fight for our freedom. We are not ‘passing away’, we are being killed by the brutal Indonesian soldiers. That is the truth.”

Nelson’s work has also received fierce criticism from tribal peoples in North America and New Zealand. A Maori blogger wrote, "Maori people are not part of a dying breed and we don’t need to be portrayed as such, for a book, ” and Cowlitz Indian Elissa Washuta wrote in Salon magazine, “Nelson’s mission is built on a horrifying assumption: that these indigenous peoples are on the brink of destruction. He couldn’t be more wrong.”

Davi Kopenawa, spokesman of the Yanomami tribe in Brazil and known as the “Dalai Lama of the Rainforest”, said during his recent visit to London, “I saw the photos and I didn’t like them. This man only wants to force his own ideas on the photos, to publish them in books and to show them to everyone so that people will think he’s a great photographer. Just like Chagnon, he does whatever he wants with indigenous peoples. It is not true that indigenous peoples are about to die out. We will be around for a long time, fighting for our land, living in this world and continuing to create our children.”

Notes to Editors:

- Download images of Nixiwaka Yawanawá at the Atlas Gallery in London

Nixiwaka Yawanawá protested against the "outrageous" exhibition of Jimmy Nelson's work at London's Atlas Gallery, wearing his ceremonial headdress.
Download hi-res image
Credit: © Sophie Pinchetti/Survival

Amazon Indian Nixiwaka Yawanawá handed a letter to London's Atlas Gallery stating 'We are not passing away, we are struggling to survive.'
Download hi-res image
Credit: © Sophie Pinchetti/Survival

- Read Survival Director Stephen Corry’s full exposé about Jimmy Nelson’s work in US journal Truthout
- Jimmy Nelson’s exhibition at London’s Atlas Gallery opened on September 25, 2014

Read this online: http://www.survivalinternational.org/news/10442

Survival International USA, 2325 3rd Street, Suite 401, San Francisco, CA 94107, USA
T +1 415 503 1254

Survival International, 6 Charterhouse Buildings, London EC1M 7ET, UK
T +44(0)20 7687 8700

www.survivalinternational.org

Designed and Hosted by

↑ Top