Savages: The Life and Killing of the Yanomami

by Dennison Berwick

Yanomami men and women tell their own stories of their contact with the outside world, especially the decimation brought by an illegal invasion of goldminers since 1987 and the challenges they now face in contact with Whites. This book is the only one reporting from the Yanomami point of view about their understanding of the attempts to destroy them, the upsets in the cosmos caused by extracting gold from the earth and their valiant resistance and fight for survival.

245 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

Reviews

[Cameron · Rating 4 out of 5]

Berwick has written several other first-person adventure stories about his treks into remote places, but this one does not fit easily into the adventure story category. It is also an eloquent piece of journalism describing the period in the early 90s when the Yanomami were on the verge of annihilation due to greed, corruption, and disdain for human rights. That was the year that Berwick spent living in a Yanomami community, getting to know them intimately as human beings, while they struggled to comprehend the convoluted Brazilian politics that threatened their very existence. During that year, Berwick left the Amazon only once, to travel to Europe with Davi Kopenawa on a campaign to bring the Yanomami's plight to the world's attention.

Berwick does a wonderful job of describing Yanomami culture and and mythology while he introduces us to their way of life, deep in the rainforest. He also describes the people who are defending the Yanomami as well as those who sought to open up tribal lands to mining, logging and farming. The two sides are worlds apart in values and respect for human dignity. By great good fortune, the defenders prevailed and the Yanomami were granted their own land in 1992.

I was interested in all of this because I arrived to work in the Yanomami Indigenous Area in 1996, and I knew many of the people mentioned in the book, including Davi, Claudia, Bruce, Carlos, and Henri. Berwick's portrayal of them is delightfully accurate. Yet when I left in 2001, nothing much had changed--miners were still entering the area illegally and corrupt politicians were still getting rich off Yanomami exploitation. Still, it's worth remembering that the Yanomami are among the last indigenous groups still surviving, and that many others died off through disease and slavery after the Europeans arrived. Berwick's book is an important chapter in the history of human rights.

[Glothy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was pretty repulsed by one particular practice of the Yanomami (if you have read the book you can probably guess which one) but I didn't let that affect my judgement of their lifestyle and the challenges they were/are facing.

Could read this book over and over again as Berwick really manages to capture the atmosphere of the rainforest and the people living in it. It made me feel peaceful. Sort of 'at home' even though I've never been anywhere near a rainforest. This book isn't afraid to talk about the difficulties (both social and physical) of existing in Yanomami society for both Yanomami people themselves, and most intriguingly from the perspective of a westerner joining Yanomami society.

What makes Berwick's experiences more significant for me is that Davi Yanomami is still campaigning for the rights of his people and how, in 20 years nothing has really changed.