Amazon Week V - New York City 1994 - #20

Weaving the thread of indigenous advocacy into this story

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Sometimes my narrative thought feels like I am handsewing the stories together with a backstitch. From a point two stitches forward, I need to circle the needle around and back to connect to an earlier stitch. I find I have written all the way to the (Northern Hemisphere) autumn of 1994, only to realize there is another thread wanting to be woven into the embroidery of that year and beyond. This is the story of how the people of the Amazon came into my life and heart.

When I initially named the Four Things I Always Wanted to Do, it did not occur to me that trekking in the Himalayas, living in another country, buying art from artist friends, and learning from indigenous teachers, were interrelated goals. They were just four things on a list. But as I tell the stories, even tiny details of how these were fulfilled made it clear the Things were all part of the same Plan. My experiences with Lakota and other native American teachings influenced how I chose to approach Tibet. I traveled to Tibet with an artist and when I returned encountered my Lakota friends at Lama Tsultrimʻs stupa blessing. One of my Brazilian friends, an artist representative, married a man I hiked with one day in Nepal. My home is filled with art from Brazilians who happened to be interested in indigenous knowledge from their homeland and beyond.

It was inevitable that an opportunity to be in service to preserving the Amazonian Rainforest and the traditional knowledge of its people would come my way.

A large part of my job in 1992-93 was networking, building relationships that might ultimately help us put together a piece of business for the Bank while making sure I understood the political and economic dynamics in Brazil to pick the right deals. During my weeks in New York, that could mean attending sessions about Latin America at the Council on Foreign Relations to which Iʻd been elected to term membership in 1991. Or lunch programs at the Brazilian-American Chamber of Commerce, which is where I found myself sitting to next to Maria Jose “Zezé” Weiss, founder of Amanaka’a Amazon Network.

Zezé explained that while Amanaka’a advocated for the Rainforest and its people at institutions like the United Nations, World Bank, and OAS year-round, its annual Amazon Week event brought leaders from the Rainforest to a gathering with government and NGO officials, scientific researchers, grassroots environmentalists, students, socially oriented celebrities, and even businesspeople, in learning and solidarity. The week included multiple events: discussions, workshops and artistic presentations.

I loved the sound of this and excitedly shared my history going back to studying Lakota in college. “How can I help?” almost did not need to be said. Zezé could feel my excitement. Over the next two years I volunteered in multiple roles and made multiple connections. I moderated and translated during workshops and panels. My friend Antonio Peticov’s art is featured on the cover of the 1994 Amazon Week program; the following year a portfolio of my friend Valdir Cruz’s photos taken during Amazon Week 1994 was presented to top corporate sponsors including ones I enlisted in the cause.

Among the people I met during those Amazon Week events and the many stories I could tell, a few backstitch neatly into the bigger story.

The program for Amazon Week 1994, the fifth time it was held but my first.

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On May 2, 1994, at the Opening Ceremony at the United Nations, I took the stage as Master of Ceremonies for Amazon Week V. The film “Davi Against Goliath” was shown that evening and this was the first time I met Davi Kopenawa Yanomami. Over the previous seven years of “economic development”, one-fifth of his people had died from malaria and other diseases introduced by the miners who came to extract resources from their homelands. Davi’s mission was to fight back against the destruction of his people and the Forest that sustains them. He was traditionally trained as a shaman. He had also learned Portuguese from American missionaries – which is why he became a spokesperson, and why we understood each other’s imperfectly accented Portuguese perfectly.

In more recent years I have read criticism that perhaps Davi’s expressed views were coopted by environmentalists rather than being genuine thoughts of his own. I find it ironic and somewhat irritating that as years passed and his fluency and understanding of western ideas deepened, the fact that he could use that proficiency to express the issues more eloquently in our terms would lead some to question his legitimacy or agency. When I met and translated for him, he was not yet a sort of celebrity and his Portuguese was as rudimentary as mine. But he was clear and passionate about his message. One particular incident comes to mind.

Oh Shinnah was in New York during Amazon Week and I got her an invitation to the opening reception. As Oh Shinnah and I circulated together, Davi Yanomami approached us and struck up a conversation with her as I translated. The conversation is one I have replayed in my head many times for another reason. When I wrestled with whether or not Oh Shinnah was, in fact, even partly native American, this conversation was one that seemed to validate that the stuff she knew was genuine even if she was not. With little preamble, Davi explained he wanted to compare shamanic practices. What did she carry in her medicine pouch? (How did he know she was wearing a hidden pouch?) What was her technique for lucid dreaming and did she astral travel from there? (Did he know that the first workshop I’d taken from her was about dreaming?)

Then he began to tell her he understood that what was happening to his tribe had happened much earlier in North America. I translated a litany of sentences beginning with the phrase “The white people…” in rapid fire succession. The white people had a kind of spiritual disease. The white people were blind to what they were destroying when they mined the land. The white people did not even see the Yanomami as people and did not care that they brought diseases.

The third time I repeated “The white people…”, Oh Shinnah said to me “You know he does not see you as white. I hope this is not making you uncomfortable.” As a neophyte translator I had no time to react to content, and anyway I would have agreed with his statements if I did have time to think. It was kind of her to be concerned. I also understood she was not saying that he did not recognize my Caucasian features or life of privilege. I knew from other conversations that he did.

When I thought back on this exchange in coming to terms with my relationship with Oh Shinnah, I concluded that her ethnic composition must have been equally unimportant to him. Perhaps his shamanic training gave him sight beyond that. I know for sure when we want to communicate but don’t have language in common, we all attune to the 90% of communication that happens through energy and body language. If Davi did not see me as “white”, it would be for the same reason the nuns in Shoto Terdrom greeted me and Vijali with the term “ani” or nun but did not address Karil as one. Our energy and actions tell others are who we are.

The other attendee who impressed me that first year was Luiz Ignacio de Silva (“Lula”), the Workers Party leader who was on a panel about Sustainable Development Polices for the Amazon. The Brazilian establishment and press was not taking Lula’s candidacy for President of Brazil very seriously. He was roughly spoken, just a labor leader after all. After listening to him during Amazon Week, I disagreed with the assessment of Lulaʻs political prospects, and convinced the Senior Fellow for Latin America at the Council on Foreign Relations to organize a luncheon for him while he was in New York City. It took two unsuccessful runs from that time until he finally served as President of Brazil from 2003 to 2011. As I write this in 2023, Lula has just been elected President again, despite having been caught in a corruption scandal and imprisoned in the interim.

Davi, Lula. I think it is one of my jobs in this life to recognize and support emerging leaders and leadership that can act and transform on behalf of the common good, regardless of the package it comes in.

Speaking of exceptional leaders, Lula has once again named Marina Silva as Brazil’s Minister of the Environment. Our story, my story with Marina, began in 1995, during Amazon Week VI. It deserves its own separate telling.

Até a próxima!