Davi Kopenawa

Davi Kopenawa is a Yanomami shaman and political leader from the Brazilian Amazon, and a leading voice for Indigenous land rights. After seeing his people devastated by epidemics and gold miners, he campaigned internationally for the protection of Yanomami territory, which Brazil recognised in 1992. The Falling Sky (2010), told to the French anthropologist Bruce Albert over many years, combines autobiography, Yanomami cosmology and a sharp critique of white society and its hunger for goods and minerals. He shared the Right Livelihood Award in 2019 with the Hutukara Yanomami Association.

Key ideas

• The forest is alive and held up by spirits (xapiri), which shamans see and call on in dreams and trance.
• If the forest is destroyed and the shamans die out, the sky will fall on everyone, not only on the Yanomami.
• White people's obsession with merchandise and minerals blinds them to the value of the forest.
• Protecting Indigenous lands is a responsibility that benefits all of humanity.

Major works

• The Falling Sky (2010, with Bruce Albert)
• Yanomami: l'esprit de la forêt (2022, with Bruce Albert)

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