Canadians play key role in Altamira conference
Eight hundred Amazon Indians from over 20 tribes gathered in Altamira in February to express their opposition to devastating hydroelectric projects. Forty Canadians, including four Indians attended.
Last fall, Canadian scientist David Suzuki spent six weeks filming in the Amazon. Chief Paiakan invited him to visit Aucre, the remote Kayapo village which Paiakan founded some years ago. There, Suzuki ate turtle, fished from dugout canoes, and slept in a hammock in Paiakan's hut, learning about the Indians' way of life and their fight to save the forest from logging, gold mining, and most immediately, hydroelectric dams.
As soon as he could, Suzuki phoned Canada to ask his wife Tara Cullis to mobilize fundraisers in Toronto and Ottawa to support the Kayapo. In late November, Paiakan arrived in Toronto after fundraising in Europe. Travelling alone, speaking no English, vulnerable to every germ, and unaccustomed to winter or western clothes, Paiakan was a marvel.
Fundraising events Nov. 28 in Toronto and Nov. 29 in Ottawa raised $57,000 (U.S. funds). Together with $23,000 (U.S.) from the U.K. and $9,000 (U.S.) raised in Brazil, this cash provided the operating budget for the historic conference, held Feb. 20 to 25, 1989, in the frontier town of Altamira. Located in the northeastern Amazon state of Para, Altamira is the proposed site of the Kararao dam, the first of 136 new dams planned for Brazil, 80 in the Amazon basin.
David Suzuki
Officially titled the First National and International Gathering of the Indigenous Peoples of the Xingu, the conference brought together for the first time approximately 800 Amazonian Indians from over 20 tribes. Traditional enemies, they became united by a common enemy, the proposed dams which threaten to flood their homelands.
The money raised in Canada, the U.K. and Brazil was used to organize the entire event. The natives, coming from different areas of the vast Amazon basin, were housed in a temporary village constructed at Betania, church-owned territory about 20 minutes' drive from Altamira. This was done for their comfort and to lessen their risk of contracting diseases from non-natives.
Environmentalists from Brazil, England, the U.S. and Japan crowded Altamira's few hotels. The Canadian contingent, at 40, was the largest international group. It included four native people including Chief Rosie Muskego representing the Assembly of First Nations; singer Gordon Lightfoot; and representatives from environmental groups including the World Wildlife Fund, Friends of the Earth (Ottawa), Our Common Ground, Probe International and the Western Canada Wilderness Committee.
APPENDICTIS THREATENS SUCCESS OF ALTAMIRA CONFERENCE
Stricken with appendicitis and taken to a Belem hospital only days before the conference, Chief Paiakan of the Kayapo--the architect of the conference--was greeted on his arrival in Altamira with great emotion. Photographs of the double line of warriors in full regalia chanting and weeping as Paiakan made his way from the plane appeared on the front pages of newspapers all over Brazil.
Despite the recent surgery, Paiakan managed to chair the conference for the full four days.
Each morning the buses from Betania pulled in. The Indians, with multi-colored parrot-feather headdresses, jaguar-tooth necklaces and ropes of blue and red beads, sang as they filed into the auditorium.
At the conference, supporters, including the mayor of Manaus and seven members of the Brazilian congress took turns at the microphone, emotionally vowing support.
When Jose Antonio Muniz, the chief engineer of the government's regional power authority Electronorte spoke, Tuira, Paiakan's cousin approached him. She swung her machete at Muniz with hacking motions. No one breathed. She jabbed it at him like a spear. No one moved. And finally she slapped him with the flat side of the machete on both cheeks, yelling at him: "You're seeing things according to your own interests, not ours. You've told us a worthless story!"
The support from indigenous peoples of other countries included Kwakiutl Simon Dick and the Haida, Guujaaw. They entered the hall in full regalia and sat with the Amazon natives on the palm-frond "carpet", to the Indians' delight.
When Simon and Guujaaw drummed and danced, they created such a sensation that Paiakan closed the meetings for the day, inviting the two drummers, plus the entire Canadian contingent, back to the encampment at Betania for more dancing. The evening was magic: full of laughter and emotion. The bond formed between the native people of the Amazon and Canada was very moving.
The conference closed with the New Corn Ceremony, a spectacle of songs and dancing performed outdoors on the driest, hottest day of the trip. As the Kayapo danced in symbolic battle against the dams that may flood their homes, an astonishing rainbow--despite the lack of clouds or rain--formed above the dance, increasing in strength. As soon as the dance ended it faded away. But this conference kindled an international effort which will grow and help stop ecologically and culturally destructive Amazon development projects.
