Rio’s Carnival parade: Yanomami leaders use samba to protest genocide and illegal mining in Indigenous lands
Author: Responsible Business News / Date: 23 February 2024

Brazil's activists want people to know that an Indigenous land catastrophe has been caused by unlawful mining.
Rio de Janeiro gave itself over to the famed carnival’s celebrations. The parades of samba schools coloured the city’s Sambadrome every hue imaginable. However, one of them offered the show a really unique and particular request.
Salgueiro’s samba school recognised the Yanomami people, the biggest Indigenous population in Brazil, and called for a more forceful campaign against illegal mining on their land.
On some of their floats, massive sculptures of Yanomami people were shown, while on others, a performer costumed as a Yanomami woman attempting to defend her kid was displayed alongside a cut tree stump.
The parade served as a platform for the samba school to raise awareness of the severe consequences—such as extensive river pollution, starvation, and disease—caused by illegal mining within Yanomami territory.
Together with percussionists who had the phrase “Miners out” inscribed on their drums, the dancers performed on the largest platform in Rio.
As they marched across the Sambadrome, the parade participants chanted, “My Salgueiro [the samba school] is the arrow for the people of the forest,” reaching out to the over 75,000 people there in person as well as the millions of people watching on TV.
Yanomami people use samba rhythms to protest against unlawful mining.
Shaman and Yanomami leader Davi Kopenawa gave the samba school advice on how to continue being genuine with his people. Along with thirteen other Yanomami, he joined the ensemble for the march.
“Ours is a cry for help from Brazil and the world at large. My hope is that the world, upon hearing our call, will put pressure on the Brazilian government to remove all the miners, destroyers of our mother Earth, who are soiling the water and killing fish,” said Kopenawa.
The Yanomami chief led the parade while wearing a headdress, armbands, and a handmade necklace with a jaguar motif.
Activists call for more efforts from Brazilian authorities
Following his election in 2022, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has worked to re-establish environmental concerns as a top priority for Brazil.
A year ago, Lula proclaimed a public health emergency for the Yanomami people following the acrimonious mandate of his predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro.
In Brazil’s biggest Indigenous territory, which covers more than 9 million hectares in the northern Amazon rainforest near the Venezuelan border, over 30,000 Yanomami people reside.
The military, medical personnel, nurses, and food were dispatched by the Brazilian government. Still, the health ministry reports that more than 300 Yanomami passed away in 2023 for a variety of reasons.
Lula also established an interministerial task team specifically tasked with combating illicit mining. According to government officials, Yanomami territory’s illegal mining areas have decreased by 85% since the operation started, and the health of the Yanomami people has improved.
Prosecutors, law enforcement, and workers from federal environmental organisations claim that despite the operation was initially successful, illicit miners are again returning. Head of environmental protection at Brazil’s environmental agency Ibama, Jair Schmitt, stated that miners have adapted to work at night, camp under the forest canopy, and use old mining pits rather than clearing new ones in order to avoid detection by law enforcement and satellite.
Questioning the military’s role in providing protection
The military has come under fire for not doing enough to defend the Yanomami people.
Lula had declared that they will be a major player in the conflict, offering security and logistical assistance to local government employees and federal officials who claim to be feeling more and more afraid for their lives.
However, under Bolsonaro, the army, which maintains three permanent bases inside Yanomami territory, chose not to raise the alarm. “There was nearly a massacre of an unprotected population. Why did the army let this happen instead of denouncing it to the federal government or reaching out to the press?” Martins Filho, a professor at the Federal University of Sao Carlos, said. “In a certain way, they were accomplices.”
The army, under a statement, responded that it is “always prepared to fulfil its strategic missions” and that the health crisis and unlawful mining in the Yanomami region “are complex issues involving the legal jurisdiction of various government agencies.”
According to the statement, this includes aiding federal authorities with communications, logistics, and intelligence operations like those carried out in Yanomami territory.
André Luiz Porreca Ferreira Cunha, a federal prosecutor who supervises cases involving illicit mining in the western Amazon, said violent attacks on environmental agency Ibama agents and federal police officers are becoming increasingly common, with some cases resulting in attempted killings. “Some are heavily armed, the health teams are scared. This state of emergency cannot solve the problem. We need something permanent, for all the communities,” Ferreira Cunha said.