Lineage

Yanomami

Also known as: Yanomamö, Yanomama, Yąnomamɨ

One of the largest still-relatively-isolated Indigenous populations of the Americas — approximately 38,000 people across roughly 200 villages in the rainforest highlands and lowlands straddling the Brazil-Venezuela border. The Yanomami territory in Brazil — the *Terra Indígena Yanomami* — is the country's largest demarcated Indigenous land (~96,650 km²) and one of the most ecologically intact stretches of the upper Amazon. Yanomami life centers on the *yano* (large communal shabono dwelling), shifting cultivation of plantain, manioc, and forest fruits, hunting and fishing, and a deeply elaborated shamanic tradition based on *yãkoana* (a *Virola* snuff). Persistent illegal-gold-mining incursion has been an existential threat to Yanomami life through the 2010s and 2020s.

Land and continuing presence

Yanomami territory spans the Brazil-Venezuela border in the headwater country of the upper Rio Branco and upper Orinoco — high forest, steep terrain, and a relatively recent (post-1950s) sustained contact with the surrounding Brazilian and Venezuelan states. The Terra Indígena Yanomami was demarcated by the Brazilian state in 1992 after sustained advocacy by Davi Kopenawa Yanomami and Survival International. Today’s population (~38,000) is divided across roughly 200 communities (locally called yano) speaking four mutually-intelligible Yanoman-language varieties.

Practice and knowledge

Yanomami live in yanos — large round communal dwellings housing 50–400 people in a single shared roof structure, with each family’s hammocks and hearths arranged around a central plaza. Shifting cultivation produces plantain (the calorie staple), cassava, sweet potato, taro, sugarcane, peach palm, tobacco, and cotton in clearings of approximately one hectare worked for three to four years before forest regrowth.

Shamanic practice (xapiri — the work with spirit-helpers) is central to Yanomami cosmology and uses yãkoana — a snuff prepared from the resin of Virola tree bark — to access non-ordinary states. Davi Kopenawa’s collaborative book with Bruce Albert, The Falling Sky (A queda do céu, 2010), is one of the most-cited recent Indigenous-authored philosophical-cosmological texts.

The Yanomami food economy is one of the most thoroughly forest-integrated of any people on Earth — over 500 plant species are documented in active Yanomami use, with hunting (peccary, tapir, monkey, agouti, paca) and fishing (with timbó fish-stunning vines) providing the protein.

Contemporary

Davi Kopenawa Yanomami, the principal contemporary Yanomami spokesperson, was awarded the Right Livelihood Award in 2019. The Hutukara Yanomami Association is the principal Indigenous-led representative organization. The Bolsonaro-era (2019–2022) collapse of Brazilian state enforcement allowed roughly 20,000 illegal gold miners (garimpeiros) into Yanomami territory, producing a documented humanitarian crisis (malaria, mercury contamination, malnutrition, infant mortality, sexual violence). The Lula government’s 2023 emergency intervention to evict miners and restore health and supply lines is one of the most consequential recent Indigenous-rights actions in Brazil.

Sources

Hutukara Associação Yanomami
Davi Kopenawa & Bruce Albert, The Falling Sky (Belknap/Harvard, 2013)
Survival International — Yanomami campaign
Wikipedia — Yanomami

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Practical

demonstrated by

Indigenous-led conservation the *Terra Indígena Yanomami* — Brazil's largest demarcated Indigenous land — shows the lowest deforestation rates in its broader Amazon region
Swidden Yanomami plantain-and-manioc swidden in the upper Amazon

2 inbound links · 2 outbound

Land and continuing presence

Practice and knowledge

Contemporary

See also

Sources

What links here, and how