by David Suzuki
Ironically, in a serious faux pas, Brazilians had chosen a Kaiapo war cry, Kararao, as the name of the first dam. It must have steeled the opposition. Paiakan wanted a motorboat to travel up the river to contact people and unite them in a fight to stop the dams. He wanted to coax those people out of the forest to roads and buses and transport them to the very site of the proposed dam near Altamira. There they would build a traditional village for the first gathering of the indigenous people of the Amazon. He had conceived of an event that would attract the world media and embarrass Brazil. It was a brilliant strategy, worthy of the most savvy Greenpeace stunt. This is what he had already cooked up when I met him in Gorotire.
THAT NIGHT, AS WE exchanged thoughts through Juneia, Paiakan was sizing me up.
The camera crew were to fly into Aucre in a couple of days, but Paiakan wanted to fly back to Aucre with his wife, Irekran, before the rest of the team. The extra flight would cost several hundred dollars. Nancy Archibald as the producer was worried about the cost overruns we were already racking up and refused to pay. I could see Paiakan and Irekran were anxious to go early, so I offered to pay the money and asked if I could go in with them. Nancy agreed, and the meeting broke up.
The next day, after some of the dancing staged by the women in Gorotire had been filmed, Paiakan, Irekran, and I took off for Aucre. As the plane leveled off, I had a moment of panic as I realized I would be spending the next days in a village where only Paiakan spoke any language other than Kaiapo and that was Portuguese, which I didn't understand. He had learned one English phrase: “Let's go, Dave.” What if something happened and I couldn't communicate with anyone? I would be in the middle of an immense wilderness with no way to communicate with the outside world.
My panic quickly passed, however, as I was swept up in the wonder of the adventure, my childhood dream come true. After an hour's flight over endless, pristine forest, a clearing came into view. I saw an oval ring of huts by a stream, the Rio Zinho, “little river.” A thin cleared track was our runway. We bounced along the stubble to a halt, and the plane was mobbed by what seemed like the entire village.
The women were naked except for beaded necklaces and bracelets, their bodies were painted with black patterns, and their faces were bright red with dyes from plants. Their eyebrows had been plucked, and a triangular area from their foreheads to the crown of their heads was shaved clean. Many of the men, whose bodies were also painted, wore flip-flops, shorts, and headdresses of brilliantly colored feathers. The naked children were painted and bore large holes in their earlobes from wooden plugs. None wore labrets (wooden disks inserted into the lower lip), but many adult men sported holes below their lower lips through which drool dripped. The women wailed in a high-pitched keening, eyes weeping and noses running, to let the arrivals know how much they had been missed. It was astounding to see people like the ones in Dad's magazines. Those had fueled my childhood dreams; these were the real thing.
I was an object of great interest, especially to the children, who had no inhibitions. They jostled about, pushing each other away and bumping into me as they tried to keep a frontline eye on me. Adolescent boys picked up the gear without being told, and we walked in the blazing sun toward Paiakan's hut. The inside of the hut was dark, enclosed by walls of sticks sealed with mud and covered with a thatched roof. A half partition divided the hut, with one side used for hammocks and the other for cooking and eating, and there we hung out.
Paiakan knew I was hot and sweaty. First things first—we walked along a path for a hundred yards until it fell steeply to the river. There women sat on the bank in the shade, putting dough balls onto hooks,
Kaiapo woman in Gorotire prepared to dance
which they threw out into the pool as bait to catch coarse-looking chublike fish called piau. Children dived into the same pool; others dipped metal pots into collecting pools, where clear water seeped out of the riverbank. The girls and women plunged into the pool and, cupping their hands, chanted and slapped the water in a rhythmic song.
It was overwhelmingly idyllic to my North American eye. The water was warm, but it was a wonderful relief from the humid heat. I did wonder about piranhas and learned the next day that people caught them in this same pool. The horrifying tales of piranhas attacking and consuming horses, reducing men to bone in a matter of minutes, turned out to be jazzed-up stories for the adventure magazines I'd loved. I'd also heard about the candiru, the tiny, parasitic catfish that homes in on urea leaking from fish and swims right into the unsuspecting anal pores. I knew the rumor that candiru may follow a trail of urine dribbling from human orifices and swim up urethras. Catfish have sharp spines on their pectoral and dorsal fins, and it is said that the pain of a candiru is beyond belief. Somehow I managed to suppress all such thoughts and just enjoy the scene.
Once my hammock was hung in Paiakan's hut, I wandered around the village circle, looking in doorways and waving at people lying in hammocks or working on chores. On some of the thatched roofs were tethered parrots that I suspect were the source of some of the feathers in headdresses. In the center of the clearing was a covered, wall-less structure where the men gathered to gossip, smoke, weave shoulder bands in which women carried infants, and create the feather ornaments. Their pipes were wicked-looking structures carved out of wood, with a straight stem opening out into a wider bowl where the tobacco was placed. The smoke must have rushed right into the lungs of the smoker. I was glad I had given up smoking a long time ago.
All around the village was forest. In the understory, useful plants such as bananas, pineapples, and cassava could be seen. Agroforestry is the deliberate modification of the forest by people, a practice that has gone on for thousands of years. When Europeans arrived in Africa, Asia, and the Americas, they found what they assumed were pristine wild forests. But it turns out these apparently natural forests had been modified. Villages would be built at the perimeter of wild forests. Over time, plants and trees would be gathered from the wild regions, taken to the villages, and deliberately planted in a perimeter zone to be used as needed. There could be hundreds of species in this zone, and that's why the diversity appeared to Europeans to reflect its wildness. Animals, too, came into the perimeter and were hunted for food. But the villagers knew it was the wild heartland that was the true source of their food.
I returned to Paiakan's hut as the sun approached the horizon. Inside, Irekran was cooking rice and beans in metal pots on the open fire, and in the center of the fire was a dead turtle just plopped on its back onto the coals. Irekran ladled rice and beans onto a tin plate as Paiakan grabbed a leg of the turtle, wrenched it off, and offered it to me. Clearly, it was considered the best part, as everyone watched me, anxiously anticipating an expression of gratitude appropriate to the honor. I smiled and bobbed my head, hoping they could see how happy I was. I had eaten snapping turtle before, when Dad had caught one and we killed and cooked it. As I remembered, the meat was very dark and . . . well, it was meat and it hadn't been too bad.
In the middle of the Amazon, I was hungry and any meat seemed fine. The only problem was that this leg was still pretty bloody and hardly cooked at all. Now, I'm Japanese and eat raw fish all the time, yet I couldn't help wondering what kind of parasites might be in a turtle in a tropical rain forest. But what really made it hard for me was the skin, which was covered in bumps and wrinkles that looked so . . . alive. And the claws, for some reason, really bothered me.
Nevertheless, I grabbed the leg by the claws and bit into the other end. Mmm, not bad. I really was hungry, and with the rice and beans it was great, but as soon as I finished the leg, a second one was plopped onto my plate—a real honor. I tried to attack this leg with the same gusto, only to have a third leg appear when I finished the second. That was it—I ate three legs and begged off the last one.
That night I lay in my hammock, listening to the steady thrum of insects and the chirps of frogs from the surrounding forest, the gentle snores and breathing of Paiakan's family all aro
und me. I felt so far away from anything I knew. This was the realization of dreams I had held for forty years.
It had still been warm when we crawled into the hammocks, so I'd stretched out the thin sleeping bag I brought and lay on top of it. I fell asleep but woke up surprised to be shivering. The night had cooled right down, and I was so grateful to climb into the bag for the rest of the night.
The next morning, using sign language and gestures honed from playing charades, I found the latrine. It was a narrow, open pit that one straddled, partially hidden behind a woven screen. If you ever find yourself in a similar situation, don't look into the open pit—the image of a mass of writhing maggots will sear your brain.
That morning we ate rice and beans, and a fish someone had dropped off. Here in as remote a part of the Amazon as you could find, the impact of contact was obvious, from the shorts, T-shirts, and flipflops to pots, knives, and fishhooks. Paiakan's hut contained the detritus of his trips to the outside world—plastic toys and his video camera. Still, this was as self-sufficient a way of life as one can imagine. A fractured limb, infected cut, or illness would have to be treated according to traditional knowledge and the medical skills available in the village. Without refrigeration, food had to be gathered daily; but that was a satisfying activity, and the food was fresh and chemical free.
It was frustrating to be so isolated by the barrier of language. Hand signals and smiles transmit only the most basic of information. I love charades as a game, but not as a way of life. I couldn't even ask important questions like “How is the fishing?” or “Are there jaguars?” I was happy finally to hear a plane in the distance. Now one of the arrival committee, I scampered along with the other villagers to the airstrip and welcomed the crew.
After the CBC gang arrived, I had to write and memorize a couple of stand-ups while Juneia arranged for the Kaiapo women to perform a dance sequence in the clearing. It was a spectacular sight as the women, naked and painted from head to foot, chanted and danced in unison. At one point I looked over at Paiakan and realized he was directing them with hand signals. We interviewed Paiakan on-camera, asking him why he had moved his people here and what the forest meant to him, as Juneia translated his Portuguese for us. He was eloquent, and it was a very productive shoot.
Then Paiakan sat down with Juneia to talk to me about his plans to fight the dams. He asked me for help in raising money to take different tribe members to Altamira and to build the traditional village on the dam site. I had no choice but to promise I'd do the best I could. But if I were to raise funds, I realized a key question was: would he be willing to come to Canada himself? His presence would make all the difference. Si: he would come.
Soon we were on our way out of the village, crossing a sea of green that extended as far as we could see on both sides of the plane. I vowed I would return for a longer stay. After nearly an hour, we began to see thin wisps of smoke, clearings, and huts and eventually landed near Redenção, the nearest settlement, which would have taken thirteen days to reach if we had canoed.
As soon as I could, I phoned Tara. She says I had a catch in my throat as I related the threats to the forest. “You have to do something!” I told her. When she asked what, I told her about the Kaiapo and their charismatic leader, describing Paiakan's plan, his need for funds, and his promise to come to Canada to help raise money and the profile of the issues.
Kaiapo girls in Aucre before a festa
As I continued on my way for the remaining five weeks of the shoot, Tara sprang into action in Canada, organizing events in Toronto and Ottawa. In 1988, the Amazon was a hot topic. The scale of its destruction was on everyone's lips. With luck, Paiakan's visit would fuel public and press interest.
People were quick to lend a hand. In Toronto, Monte Hummel and the World Wildlife Fund offered support for a fund-raising event, and in Ottawa, Elizabeth May, who was now with the Sierra Club and had first rocketed into prominence fighting logging in Cape Breton, promised the same. Soon great plans were afoot.
The Amazon rain forest is immense. Although the ecosystem has been assaulted for decades by gold miners, loggers, peasants, and ranchers, most of it remains intact. As roads increase, however, at some point the integrity of the forest may become so diminished that it will no longer support its biodiversity.
On our shoot, we visited immense coal-mining operations where huge holes appeared in the forest. We visited the Balbina dam, which had flooded eight hundred square miles of forest and driven two tribes close to extinction, drowning untold numbers of animals and plants, yet silted up so rapidly that it was soon abandoned. A road through the forest is the greatest threat because it brings with it a flood of the landless poor, desperate to make a living and willing to destroy the forest to gain it. We interviewed representatives of the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, who justified the need for roads to carry economic development into remote parts of Brazil.
After I left Brazil to return to Canada, our crew remained to interview Chico Mendes, the charismatic rubber tapper who had galvanized his cohorts to fight to protect the forest. Two weeks after we interviewed him, he was murdered. During the 1980s, over a thousand activists, including Mendes, Indians, and many Catholic priests, had been murdered in Brazil with impunity. But the murder of Chico Mendes backfired. In death, Mendes's fame grew: he became a martyr, a worldwide symbol of the consequences of corruption underlying the destruction of the Amazon.
ON OCTOBER 14, 1988, Paiakan and Kube-i were to be tried for their visit to Washington. I flew down to Belém to witness the trial. The courthouse was ringed with young soldiers armed with rifles, pistols, shields, bulletproof vests, and clubs. Buses rolled up and out stepped hundreds of Kaiapo warriors in feathers and paint, carrying sticks, clubs, and bows and arrows. These men lined up in rows six abreast and advanced on the courthouse, beating the sticks rhythmically, marching in unison to their chants and periodic grunts. When they reached the soldiers, they lined up. Each warrior faced a soldier, menacingly staring him in the eye. The soldiers looked straight ahead, but if I had been one of them, I would have wet my pants.
Paiakan and Kube-i then gave speeches outside the courthouse, as the warriors gathered round them and sat down. An old Kaiapo woman began to scream at the warriors. Darrell Posey translated some of what she said: “I call upon you to take up arms, to kill the whites, slaughter them! I'm coming here to speak to you, to call upon you in the name of your mothers and your fathers, all of us older people. I'm calling upon you! I throw my words in your faces. Have I come in vain? You sit here while the whites are crushing us.” The men sat there with their heads bowed. The same woman then turned to the soldiers ringing the courthouse and told them: “I am here to speak my anger at you! I am enraged with you. You sit there drawing maps of our land to steal it. But I tell you, we're going to beat you soundly in defence of our land!” Kaiapo women are truly ferocious.
Paiakan and Kube-i mounted the steps to enter the courthouse but were blocked for being “seminude.” The judge ruled that they must dress to show respect for Brazilian law. When Kubei-i replied that they were dressed in respectful traditional attire, which gave them power, the judge said they must follow Brazilian formalities and should strive to become Brazilians. Darrell Posey muttered to me, “That would be genocide.”
When the court wouldn't budge, Paiakan simply told the warriors they were leaving. He said that if the government wanted to try them, it would have to go to Aucre and get them. The Kaiapo men threw their drumming sticks onto the road, boarded the buses, and left without any interference from the soldiers. I picked up two sticks, which I still have as souvenirs of that encounter.
But no government officials would dare try to fly into the remote village, where they would be completely vulnerable. The case was eventually dropped because of the absurdity of the original charges.
chapter EIGHT
PROTECTING PAIAKAN'S FOREST HOME
IN FEBRUARY 1989, we had arranged for air tickets so
that Paiakan could come to North America. After a brief stop in Chicago, where he was a guest of Terry Turner, a physical anthropologist at the University of Chicago, Paiakan flew to Toronto for our concert to raise funds for the protest to be staged at Altamira. Our translator was Barbara Zimmerman, a young Canadian herpetologist who was working in the Amazon.
Tara had an audacious idea—why not invite the major multinational companies that did business in the Amazon to attend a reception before the concert to meet Paiakan in person and, in return, to donate a thousand dollars? We would be asking companies that were destroying the rain forest to give money to someone fighting to protect it. We drew up a list of eighteen companies, from American Express to the Bank of Japan, and I called the Toronto head of each company to extend the invitation.
The Toronto reception was a gala event. The Elmwood Club donated its elegant premises and exquisite Thai food. The CBC filmed the arrival of the hosts—me, Paiakan, the Canadian writer Margaret Atwood, and Gordon Lightfoot—and the well-heeled guests. Of the eighteen companies, all but one sent a representative with a check. In one hour, we raised $16,500. That was a lot in the eighties. The only exception was the Bank of Japan. I had called the president, identified myself, and said, “I understand you have interests in Brazil and thought you would like to meet an Indian leader from the Amazon.” After a considerable pause, he replied, “We have interests in Brazil, but we do not have interest in Indians.”
The main event that night was the concert at St. Paul's Cathedral on Bloor Street. Dozens of volunteers had put up posters advertising it; when we got to the church, I was astounded to see a lineup extending around the block. More than three thousand people jammed that church, and the atmosphere was electric. A stellar list of people had agreed to appear: Margaret Atwood read a poem, and Gordon Light-foot and a hot a cappella group, the Nylons, sang. The World Wildlife Fund had the terrific idea of selling certificates to “Guardians of the Rainforest” for twenty dollars a pop.
