Spirit from the Amazon

By Tim McGirk

Davi Kopenawa Yanomami cures ailing tribal brothers with incantations given to him by a fearsome anaconda spirit that slithers up from Amazonian waters. At least that's the way Davi describes it. Like other native medicine men in the Amazon rain forest, Davi relies on hallucinogenic powders to reach the spirit world, but this leader of the Yanomami Indians also wields a more modern means of communication: a two-way radio. When an otherworldly voice squawks through the speaker, Davi wraps up his shaman's crown of toucan feathers, dons uncomfortable city clothes and walks to a clearing in the forest, where a four-seater plane awaits, propellers revving.

To safeguard his Amazonian domain of woodlands, rivers and lakes, Davi has learned to master the world of airports and international assemblies as skillfully as he roams his spirit realm of giant anacondas. When Davi, in his 40s, speaks about the plight of the estimated 22,000 Yanomamis left alive in northern Brazil and Venezuela, he's a visionary who sees his people and their rain-forest gods being swept toward extinction. "When I go to the big city, I see hungry people, without anywhere to plant crops, without drinking water, without anywhere to live. I do not want this to happen to my people too," he says.

Aided by his knowledge of Portuguese, which he gained as a child when missionaries took him to a city for treatment of tuberculosis, Davi has helped alert the world to outside threats to the Yanomami culture. The chief danger has come from gold miners, who have polluted Amazonian rivers with deadly mercury. Backed by London's Rainforest Foundation, Davi has formed alliances with indigenous leaders and environmentalists all over the world.

Prodded in part by pressure from Davi and his supporters, Brazil in 1991 set aside 36,000 sq. mi. as a Yanomami homeland. Now mining interests and loggers want the territory cut into patches totaling 7,700 sq. mi. "They want us corralled like animals," says Davi. So when the radio in his hut calls him to a new battlefront, Davi is ready to go, no matter how far it takes him from the spirit world of forest and river.

--By Tim McGirk, with reporting by Sol Biderman

With reporting by Sol Biderman