The Hutukara Yanomami Association (HAY) issued use of repudiation of the speeches of the governor of Roraima, Antonio Denarium (PP), to the newspaper Folha de S. Paulo. This Monday (01/30), the vehicle published an article in which the congressman makes discriminatory statements against the Yanomami people.
Note of repudiation from the HUTUKARA Yanomami association.
About Governor DENARIUM’s speech, Folha de São Paulo. @antoniodenarium .. @JoeniaWapichana .. @GuajajaraSonia pic.twitter.com/0e9kfyP7VO— Dario Kopenawa Yanomami (@Dario_Kopenawa) January 30, 2023
In the midst of exposing the health crisis to which the Yanomami were subjected by the unbridled growth of mining, Denarium denied the serious malnutrition experienced by Yanomami communities and stated that the indigenous people have to “acculturate [e] they can no longer remain in the middle of the forest, looking like animals”.
Faced with speech full of prejudice, HAY claims that it is necessary to vehemently repudiate the colonizing view of the country’s indigenous peoples. In addition, he defended the right of the Yanomami to exist in the living forest, following their customs.
Read the note in full:
Note of repudiation by the Hutukara Yanomami Association on Governor Denarium’s speech to Folha de São Paulo
It is with great indignation that we read the interview of Governor Antonio Denarium to Folha de São Paulo published today, January 30, 2023. While the Yanomami people are experiencing one of the greatest crises in their history, which has been denounced in recent years by the Hutukara Yanomami Association, Governor Denarium not only denies reality, but also argues that indigenous peoples “have to acculturate, they can no longer remain in the middle of the forest, looking like animals”.
Speeches of this tone denounce the degree of discrimination and prejudice to which the Yanomami people are subject. Our ways of life are denied to us as if we were primitive, incapable, inhuman. Far from being limited to political discourse, this thought was reflected in policies with a genocidal tendency that were systematically implemented in recent years to make it impossible for the Yanomami to maintain their lives. Facilitating the entry of thousands of prospectors into our Indigenous Lands and disorganizing basic health care are the direct consequences of this prejudiced notion that Governor Denarium shares. This has been an accomplice in the tragedy, even by sanctioning laws that, being unconstitutional, had the intention of promoting mining activity and weakening the inspection of activity in Indigenous Lands in Roraima.
It is necessary to vehemently repudiate the colonizing view of the country’s indigenous peoples, which reduces them to animals, incapables, or any subcategory of subjects excluded from rights who must submit to the ways of life in the city. Assimilationist policies on indigenous peoples are not compatible with a democratic rule of law. We are full subjects of rights, and we want to live well with the forest as our ancestors lived, as guaranteed by Article 231 of the Federal Constitution.
The Yanomami people are one of the most populous indigenous peoples of recent contact in the world, and holders of great ancestral knowledge about the forest where they live. It is our right to live in the forest alive according to our customs, with health and life.