Brazilian Indians

The Kayapo
* Gê-speaking group

* live along the upper tributaries of the Xingu River (Pará State)
- rain forest and savanna; two seasons (rainy and dry)
* sustained contact with outside world starting in the late 1950s
* 1993 population = 4000, living in 14 villages
- huts around a large plaza, with a men's house in the center
- communal oven at one end of plaza (a women's gathering spot)
* received formal land reserves (semi-autonomous territory) from Brazil in 1980s and 1990s
        - 100,000 square kilometers (the size of Austria)
* practice slash and burn agriculture as well as hunting and gathering
        - manioc sweet potatoes, fruit, tobacco, cotton
* headmen (or "chiefs"): achieved status, no formal power
        - an age-grade society; initiation ceremonies for boys becoming warriors
* headdresses, lip plugs, and dramatic body painting (red and black)

The largest (and wealthiest) of villages is Gorotire
    - one of the world's largest gold mines located here
    - in 1982 Brazilian gold miners invaded Kayapo territory by the thousands
    - Gorotire managed to gain control of mining concessions
    - has become a wealthy village
    - used gold earnings to buy airplanes and hire Brazilian pilots to police their territory
    - also to buy canned food, radios, video equipment, and other technological items

Another village, Kapot, is smaller, not as wealthy, and more traditional
    - see the Gorotire as having sold out
    - equate consumption of consumer goods to weakness and femininity

The Kayapo have established relations with The Body Shoppe, supplying that chain with the Brazil nut oil used in their best-selling line of hair conditioners.  (This ties into a larger fascination among westerners with all things indigenous; see the offerings at http://www.novica.com/   and http://www.eziba.com/StoreFront for further examples).
    - Chief Pykati-Re has sued The Body Shoppe for using his image in advertisements without his permission

"Chief" Ropni (or Raoni) famously established relations with the rock star Sting, and together they have worked on environmental issues. 

Ropni's nephew Payakan has also been a leader in the Indian rights/environmentalism movement.  One of their most dramatic success was opposing a Brazilian government's plan to build a series of hydroelectric dams on the Xingú River with funding from the World Bank.  The Kayapo opposition culminated in a rally organized by the Kayapo at Altamira, near the site of the proposed dam on the lower Xingú, in early1989.  At Altamira some 600 Kayapo Indians, together with contingents from 40 other Indigenous nations of Amazonia, gathered along with over 400 representatives of the Brazilian and world news media, documentary film-makers, photographers, and diverse non-governmental organizations.  The government and World Bank had been understandably reluctant to accept the Kayapo invitation to attend the Altamira rally. Only when it became clear that hundreds of national and international journalists, film-makers, and opinion leaders would attend the gathering did President Sarney of Brazil agree to send a personal representative, as well as the chief engineer of Eletronorte, the state power company in charge of the dam scheme, to present the case for the government project.

1992 Rio Earth Summit Protests

While many hold up the Kayapo as a model for relations between indigenous peoples and international organizations and corporations, these relations have not been without their problems.  Beginning in the late1980s, there was a steady trickle of reports in the Brazilian and international media that Kayapo leaders were entering into contracts with logging and mining companies, granting them concessions to operate on Kayapo lands, in return for a percentage of the proceeds. To some outsiders it appeared that the Kayapo had become collaborators in the destruction of their own forests and rivers for the sake of short-term monetary profit. Some of the media accounts reported that some Kayapo leaders were using the income from these contracts to maintain lavish personal life styles in Brazilian towns far from their home villages, complete with town houses, Brazilian servants and bodyguards, cars, airplanes, drinking binges, Brazilian mistresses and prostitutes. The biased impression conveyed by the stories of Kayapo "wealth" based on the life-styles of a few Kayapo leaders with houses in Brazilian towns was magnified by omission of any description of the poverty of the 99% of the Kayapo population who remained in the villages. Some of these reports included Payakan among the Kayapo leaders supporting an urban life style with money from logging contracts, in direct contradiction of his symbolic persona as an eco-warrior.

see The Kayapo: A Disappearing Culture?

The following photographs are by Jean Pierre Dutilleux.