• Brazil’s President has called for emergency action to assist the country’s Yanomani indigenous group.
• Living conditions among the relatively isolated Yanomani have deteriorated precipitously.
• Over 570 people have died from hunger in the last four years, according to local media.

According to a government statement on Monday, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has requested immediate assistance for the nation’s Yanomami indigenous people.

According to Brasil, there have been over 570 hunger-related deaths among the relatively remote Yanomani people in the past four years.

The new Brazilian government strategy will work to ensure security in the region, where trespassers and illegal miners have allegedly harmed deforestation, spread disease, and obstructed traffic. It will also work to offer nutritional and health support to the Yanomami.

The effort, which will work with Brazil’s Ministries of Justice, Defense, Indigenous People, and Mining, also aims to ensure that wells and cisterns have access to clean drinking water and to detect mercury pollution in nearby rivers, another effect of illegal mining operations.

On January 20, the region was deemed to be in a state of public health emergency. Following the announcement, Lula made one of his first official journeys as president of Brazil since assuming office at the beginning of the year by traveling to Yanomami territory.

Separately, Justice Minister Flavio Dino told  Brasil that his department has launched an investigation to see if the previous administration of Jair Bolsonaro engaged in “genocide” against the Yanomami.

Former president Bolsonaro, who was pro-business, publicly favored Amazon growth. He also visited Yanomani land while president, promising one town that he would honor their request for no mining, but he reduced financing for state organizations tasked with stopping illegal mining, forestry, and grazing throughout his administration.

According to Survival International, a group that works to defend indigenous rights, the Yanomami reside in the mountains and rain forests of northern Brazil and southern Venezuela.

The coronavirus was spreading among the Yanomami by miners who had unlawfully infiltrated indigenous territory, the Brazilian Socio-Environmental Institute warned in 2020.

At the time, the ISA stated on its website that “now, without a doubt, the main vector for the spread of COVID-19 inside the Yanomami Indigenous Area is the more than 20,000 illegal miners that go in and out of the territory without any control.”

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