“My Yanomami people have always lived in peace, which we share with other creatures. We know our Yanomami land in the same way our brothers, the Inuit, know the sea-ice of the Arctic or the Dongria Kondh people the hills of Orissa, or the ogi Indians the snow peaks of Colombia. We know the streams and the rapids, the path of peccary, the call of the tapir and the song of the toucan. We understand the seasons of the peach-palm trees and the ways of the sloth and the monkeys and all animals that live high in the canopy.
We know these things just as our Penan brothers of the Sarawak know the migration of the wild pig and the Bushmen of Botswana the tracks of the eland. This is how we live, today. Our ancestors taught us to understand our lands and animals, we have used this knowledge carefully, for our existence depends on it.”
- Davi Kopenawa, Yanomami, Brazil
