Xook k'iin.
Spore hosts: An evening with Davi Kopenawa Yanomami
Film screening “Holding up the Sky” and Discussion
19. September 2024
19.00-22.00
19.00-22.00
Save the Date
For free
For 12 year-olds and older
in English/in Portuguese
Join us for an evening with Davi Kopenawa, an Indigenous Yanomami shaman and leader as well as Fiona Watson, who spent decades campaigning for Indigenous rights, and Pieter van Eecke, an award-winning filmmaker.
We have the opportunity to welcome Davi Kopenawa for a screening of “Holding up the Sky”, followed by a discussion with him as well as the film's director, Pieter van Eecke, and Fiona Watson, Director of Research and Advocacy at Survival International, the global movement for Indigenous Peoples’ rights.
Davi Kopenawa is a shaman and spokesman for the Yanomami people of Brazil and a prominent Indigenous leader and thinker. For 25 years he tirelessly led the long campaign to secure Yanomami land rights for which he gained recognition around the world. Davi Kopenawa has played a key role in uniting many Yanomami communities to resist miners and powerful interests, which covet their land. In 2004 he founded the Yanomami association, Hutukara. Today, a new invasion of over 20,000 illegal gold miners and criminal gangs has engulfed the Yanomami territory, one of the world's largest rainforest areas under indigenous control. Davi Kopenawa has set off on a journey around the world to defend his people against endless colonization.
Survival International has campaigned alongside the Yanomami for decades and looks forward to welcoming you to this unique evening.
Short FILM description:
Holding Up the Sky
with Davi Kopenawa
by Pieter Van Eecke
Belgium, Brazil, Netherlands
2023 | 53' Min.
Yanomami, Portuguese, French, English
with English subtitles
If the shamans stop dancing and life in the rainforest loses its balance, the sky will fall and crush everything beneath it. This wisdom is passed on in the Brazilian Amazon by every generation of Yanomami. But gold diggers pollute the rivers, shamans die, the rainforest perishes and the earth warms up. Davi Kopenawa, shaman, chief and well-known spokesperson for the Yanomami, has been fighting these threats for more than 40 years. Time and again, he travels the world defending his people against an endless colonization. Do the Whites understand that the fall from the sky will not only crush the Yanomami?
