May 2012, as pointed out by Survival International’s Director General Stephen Corry, marked the twentieth birthday of Brazil’s Yanomami Park. The park is the largest area of protected rainforest in the world. It is also home ground to the Yanomami tribal people.
Settled along the Brazil/Venezuela border, the forest provides both home and sustenance to about 32,000 Yanomami. The Yanomami population is about 50 times larger than Brazil’s typical “uncontacted” Indian tribes.
For instance, the Yawalapiti people, who are pictured in this photo gallery, number only about 150 or so persons.
Speaking of the on-going, successful effort to save the Yanomami, Survival’s Corry insists that, “Similar victories can, indeed must, be grasped elsewhere.”
Click through this gallery of Yawalapiti portraits to glimpse an enduring way of life that will leave the world an impoverished place if it perishes.
Photo: Ueslei Marcelino/Reuters