Looking after the earth

Davi Kopenawa, president of CAFOD partner, Hutukara [Joelle Hernandez/CAFOD]

Founded in 2004, Hutukara (meaning "the part of the sky from which the earth is born") runs a bilingual education project to help the Yanomami defend their rights themselves

The combined area in Brazil and Venezuela, home to 16,000 Yanomami, is the largest indigenous territory in tropical rainforests anywhere in the world.

The Yanomami people lost 20% of their population in just seven years during the late 1980s and early 1990s as a result of mining in the territory.

Thousands of gold-diggers, polluted the rivers with mercury and brought violence and illnesses against which the Yanomami had no immunity.

After years of campaigning by Yanomami, supported by international pressure from organisations such as Survival International, the Brazilian government finally agreed to demarcate the Yanomami land in 1992 just before hosting the UN’s first Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.

CAFOD started supporting Hutukara in 2006 as a part of its Indigenous Support programme.

With CAFOD funding the organisation is able to undertake more campaigning and lobbying actions at national and international level, to ensure that the Brazilian government live up to their promises, and the future health and security of the Yanomami people.

President of Hutukara is Davi Yanomami. Born in Roraima in the northern Amazon, his community was decimated by epidemics, which swept through the area in 1959 and in 1967.

In 1985 Davi began to campaign for recognition of the vast area inhabited by the Yanomami in the Brazilian states of Roraima and Amazonas, when goldminers were invading the area and the Yanomami were dying of diseases to which they had no resistance.

In 1989 he won a UN Global 500 award in recognition of his struggle to preserve the rainforest and received the Right Livelihood or "Alternative Nobel Prize" on behalf of Survival International at a ceremony in the Swedish Parliament.

The prize was awarded in recognition of success in raising public awareness of the importance of the wisdom of traditional peoples for the future of humanity.

Davi’s eldest son Dario became a teacher in his community in 1999. In 2004 he became the head of his community’s shool and joined the board of Hutukara.

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