Biography
Davi Kopenawa is a Yanomami shaman, thinker and political leader born around 1956 in the upper Toototobi River region of the Brazilian Amazon. His career brings together the defence of Indigenous territories, the transmission of Yanomami cosmological knowledge and denunciation of the effects of illegal mining, epidemics and environmental destruction. He is president of the Hutukara Associação Yanomami, an organisation founded to protect his people's rights, health, education and territory.
In collaboration with the French anthropologist Bruce Albert, he produced La chute du ciel: Paroles d’un chaman yanomami (2010), published in Spanish as La caída del cielo. Palabras de un chamán yanomami. The work brings together memories, accounts of shamanic training and a critique of the devastation of the forest from within Yanomami categories of thought. Its significance extends beyond ethnographic testimony: it constitutes an intellectual and political intervention into the relationships between humanity, territory and non-human beings.
For decades, Kopenawa has participated in national and international campaigns for the recognition and protection of Yanomami territory. His work was honoured, together with the Hutukara association, with the 2019 Right Livelihood Award. His thought offers a decisive dialogue between Indigenous cosmologies, anthropology and contemporary debates on human rights and the ecological crisis.
Profiles and references
Published books