Indigenous Mythology and Global Warming

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COPENHAGEN, Dec 17 2009 (IPS) - Phenomena like climate change have occurred in long-past eras of humanity, when the balance between people and nature was broken, writes anthropologist Marina Barbosa in this column.
In the mythology of the Baniwa, Yanomami and Desana, indigenous peoples who live in northwestern Brazil, bordering Colombia and Venezuela, one finds explanations and warnings about climate change.

According to André Baniwa, deputy mayor of São Gabriel da Cachoeira municipality, men with great powers had foreseen the changes in the climate.

These phenomena already happened in remote times of humanity, when a rupture occurred in the harmonic coexistence between humans, animals and nature.

Baniwa was born in the community of Tucumã-Rupitã, on the upper Içana River, and served from 2005 to 2008 as vice-president of the Federation of Rio Negro Indigenous Organizations (FOIRN).

The creation myth, which also refers to the end of the world for the Yanomami, mentions the “falling of the sky,” when humans, submerged in floodwaters, battled against magical beings. This image is their greatest fear, according to the award-winning Swiss photographer Claudia Andujar, who has worked with this group for 40 years.

For the Yanomami, this could happen again if humanity does not turn back the current process of destruction. The Baniwa say the same thing.

José María Lana – resident of the Alto Rio Negro, Desana representative and member of the FOIRN board of directors – says the warning signs of the myths can already be seen.

Today's sun burns in a different way. The flowering season has changed. The rains, which used to fall in the months of April and May, are now concentrated in July and August. The “piracema” – fish spawning – occurs at a different location.

All of this interferes in the reproduction of animal and plant species, altering the food cycles of the peoples of the forests and interfering in their traditional rituals, which are intimately linked to the cycles of nature.

David Yanomami maintains that the smoke produced by human activities is the cause of this great harm. The shaman and leader, who has received international awards for his defense of indigenous peoples, lives in Watoriki, in the northern state of Roraima, near the Venezuelan border.

Pollution – from industries, bombs, combustion of petroleum and also the invisible poisons that from mining – is the cause of diseases, says Yanomami. Many of which are unknown to the shamans, who until recently had the methods necessary to manage the principal illnesses that affected their people.

These warnings have been issued by indigenous leaders for decades, but we still don't have full ability to hear them, perhaps due to the difficulty in understanding the traditional worldview of indigenous peoples, which is charged with symbols and associative language.

More aware than city residents are of human reliance on nature and the forests, the indigenous peoples have a great deal to teach us and could lead the way in reflecting on the development model that has predominated until now.

In September, representatives of these groups met in the northern city of Manaus to draft a letter from the indigenous peoples of the Brazilian Amazon about climate change, which is part of the document that Brazil's delegation brought to the Copenhagen climate change summit about the initiative known as REDD, reduction of emissions from deforestation and forest degradation.

The letter expresses the position of these groups and gathers proposals for mitigation actions, especially when it comes to preserving the Amazon forest and the contribution of traditional knowledge to new strategies for confronting climate change.

It has been shown that indigenous-held lands are more efficient in preventing deforestation and retaining carbon. The leaders claim the right to integral restitution of their territories and to be beneficiaries of payments for environmental services and for trading of carbon credits, under the REDD framework, which could be one of the few achievements of the 15th Conference of Parties (COP15) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Furthermore, they request that the funds intended to contain logging be regulated in a way that is in keeping with the unique sociocultural realities of the different ethnic groups, and say financing should be aimed at strengthening organizations and supporting programs for preserving biodiversity and traditional knowledge.

The forest is life. Life is the forest. If it is eliminated, it will destroy human sustenance. The forest keeps the water pure, which is the pillar for sustaining life on the planet.

For these populations, the jungle holds sacred places, inhabited by “superior” beings who have the capacity to “cure the planet” and balance the effects of global warming, climate shifts and diseases. André Baniwa says that technology and money are fooling us. Value lies in the harmony among humans, and between humans and nature.

We can only hope that international negotiations on climate change take into consideration what these ethnic groups have been saying for so long.