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Human Inhabitants AMERICAN PEOPLES OF THE RAINFOREST The American rainforests were once home to some of the world's most developed civilizations of antiquity including those of the Incas (Andes), Mayas (Central America), and Aztecs (Central America). These peoples created vast metropolises and made great developments in agriculture and the sciences. However all this changed with the arrival of Europeans in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. An estimated 7-10 million Amerindians (the term for American indigenous peoples) lived in American rainforests, half of them in Brazil, at the time of European arrival. When Pizarro arrived in Peru, more land was under cultivation and more food was being produced in the Andean region than is today. The grandest civilizations with expansive cities, wealth of gold, and technological achievements, existed in the Andes, though many Amerindians also lived in the Amazon. The Amazon has a long history of human settlement. Contrary to popular belief, sizeable and sedentary societies of great complexity existed in the Amazon rainforest [2005 article | Amazon Civilization Before Columbus]. These societies produced pottery, cleared sections of rainforest for agriculture, and managed forests to optimize the distribution of useful species. The notion of a virgin Amazon is largely the result of the population crash following the arrival of the Europeans in the sixteenth century. Studies suggest that 11.8% of the Amazon's terra firme forests are anthropogenic in nature resulting from the careful management of biodiversity by indigenous people. However, unlike current cultivation techniques, these Amazonians were attuned to the ecological realities of their environment from five millennia of experimentation and understood how to sustainably manage the rainforest to suit their needs. They saw the importance of maintaining biodiversity through a mosaic of natural forest, open fields, and sections of forest managed so as to be dominated by species of special interest to humans. Many of these populations existed along whitewater rivers where they had good means of transportation, excellent fishing, and fertile floodplain soils for agriculture. However, when Europeans arrived, these were the first settlements to be affected since Europeans used the major rivers as highways to the interior. In the first century of European presence, the Amerindian population was reduced by 90%. Most of the remaining peoples lived in the interior of the forest: either pushed there by the Europeans, or traditionally living there in smaller groups. The period of time from Pizarro's conquest of the Incan empire until the end of the Brazilian rubber boom around the beginning of the first world war. The Spanish and Portuguese, in the name of the Catholic religion with blessing from popes, continued the long tradition of abuse against these people -- one that would be continued by colonists, rubber tappers, and land developers. AMERICAN FOREST PEOPLES TODAY Today, despite the population decimation, natives peoples still live in American rainforests, although virtually all have been affected by the outside world. Instead of wearing traditional garb of loin cloths, most Amerindians wear western clothes and many use metal pots, pans, and utensils for everyday life. Some groups make handicrafts
Today almost no forest Amerindians live in their fully traditional ways. Perhaps only a few small groups in the Amazon basin can still claim to do so. One of these, the Tageri (part of the Waorani group), are highly threatened by oil development in Ecuador. Their plight has become an international battle between environmentalists, human rights activists, the government, and the oil industry. Indian social mobilization of American indigenous peoples has attained the highest organization of any rainforest region. Forming ethnic organizations is one way to protect themselves, their culture, and their precious natural forest resources. Amerindians have faced a long, bitter battle against development of their land by outsiders and today these organizations monitor these incursions on their lands. The Indian Missionary Council, CIMI, reported that land invasions of Brazilian Indian reservations by loggers and miners rose sharply in 1996. Loggers are increasingly trespassing on indigenous lands in search of mahogany, which can no longer be legally logged in Brazil. Recently, clashes between indigenous peoples and loggers, miners, and oil developers have received a fair amount of press, notably the on-going saga between the native Yanomani of Brazil and Venezuela and thousands of small-scale miners, known as "garimpeiros" in Brazil, who often illegally mine on the natives' demarcated lands. The far-flung Yanomani Indian tribe inhabits an France-sized area of rainforest in northern Brazil and southern Venezuela. The Yanomani lived in virtual isolation after they were first discovered in the 1920s until the 1970s when large numbers of gold miners invaded their territory. The miners introduced diseases, like measles, tuberculosis, the flu, and malaria to the resistant-deficient Yanomani resulting in a serious decline in their population. Whereas an estimated 20,000 Yanomani lived in Brazil in the late 1970s, less than 9,000 existed in 1997. Clashes between the Yanomani and the armed garimpeiros, has resulted in many fatalities. Additionally, the garimpeiros disrupt the traditional Yanomani way of life by using mercury which pollutes local rivers, wildlife, and the Yanomani themselves, while the miners' planes scare away the wildlife the Yanomani depend upon for food. The garimpeiros have also brought guns to the Yanomani meaning that inter-village disputes are today settled by killing. Brazil has had a tough time protecting the rights of the Yanomani, initiating several campaigns to oust the garimpeiros. In November 1997, the government initiated "Operation: Yanomani" to flush hundreds of gold miners off Yanomani lands. Instead of resorting the old tactics of simply deporting or arresting garimpeiros for a few days, the government has a new approach which its hopes will keep miners off Yanomani lands. The plan establishes controls on aviation fuel and tightens the monitoring of airspace to limit air traffic to airstrips near the mining areas. Today Brazil is slowly taking steps to recognize indigenous land rights. 62% of all indigenous land claims, covering 11% of Brazil (100 million hectares-396,000 square miles) have been demarcated as permanent legal title for native peoples. The process has been slow, but Brazil has plans to turn more land over to the indigenous population. |
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Forest People |
Indigenous Health Lessons from the Maya Forest people plant knowledge A Brief Social History of Borneo Forest people today Tri-country Amerindian summit Indigenous people estimates Varzea vs Terra settlements |
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