Today, the Yanomami should be celebrating the 30th anniversary of the official demarcation of their territory on May 25th, 1992, but tens of thousands of illegal gold miners allied with armed criminal gangs are acting with impunity in their territory right now, contaminating rivers with mercury and intimidating and harming the community!

«My grandparents fished to feed the community in this river. Now it’s just sludge, gasoline, diesel and mercury contamination. Fish die and our Yanomami land is dying.

We Yanomami suffer, we don’t have peace. The gold miners destroy our houses (Yanopë), destroy our forest (Urihi), destroy our spirituality of the shaman and spirits of the forest (Xapori and Ayakora).

The gold miners took everything, our safety & our health. »

• Júnior Herurari Yanomami

Two Yanomami children, 7 and 5 years old, drowned when they were pulled underwater by the powerful pumps on a dredging barge used for illegal gold mining on the Parima river in Roraima, Brazil. The boys had been playing in the river about…