This text may not be edited or altered, and may not be reproduced in whole or in part without permission. For editorial licensing of the pictures or text, please contact ZUMA Press at (949) 494.7704 or e-mail Info@zReportage.com.

Yanomami: Stone Age Survivors

Text by © Antonio Mari/ZUMA Press

     The Yanomami Indians are regarded as the last Stone-Age people residing in the Amazon rain forest. Currently, there are close to 25,000 Yanomami Indians living scattered on the border region between Brazil and Venezuela in varied degrees of isolation. Although their land is rich in natural resources like mahogany trees and valuable minerals, including uranium, niobium, gold and diamonds, the very essence of their culture is endangered by the encroachment of western civilization.

     My reportage on the Yanomami Indians of the Brazilian Amazon rain forest began in 1995. Photos from my first exhibition showed the renowned anthropologist Professor Napoleon Chagnon in his first visit to a Yanomami village since the publication of his controversial book Yanomamo: The Fierce People. The book has sold over five million copies since its publication in 1968 and remains a classic among anthropologists and anthropology students in America.

     The Yanomami Indians are the last human remnant of the 'noble savage' lifestyle, where people exist at peace with nature in enlightened unity with all creatures of the earth.

     The land and the delicate ecological balance of the rain forest they've called home for millennia are continually threatened. Because of the mahogany and the strategic minerals abundant in the area, the Yanomami people have become pawns in high-stakes international games of resource protection and acquisition. The result has been deforestation, disease and assimilation into a state of semi-urbanized impoverishment-a fate that other indigenous groups in the Amazon basin have already experienced.

     This text may not be edited or altered, and may not be reproduced in whole or in part without permission. For editorial licensing of the pictures or text, please contact ZUMA Press at (949) 494.7704 or e-mail Info@zReportage.com.

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