Hope Returns to This Indigenous Tribe

After a gruelling history, hope has returned to Brazil’s Indigenous Yanomami tribe.

“Today the Yanomami people are no longer crying because our children are no longer dying,” says local indigenous leader Júnior Hekurari. “We are recovering.”

In a decades-long disaster, the Yanomami tribe has been pushed to the brink of destruction, facing hunger and high rates of infant mortality as tens of thousands of illegal miners invaded their lands. For many years, they were left neglected until an emergency operation to save the tribe was launched by Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, expelling the miners and ultimately saving Yanomami’s lives. The air is starting to feel different as the region’s mines have been closed, and humanitarian groups and health professionals have arrived. Many malnourished children are now growing and healthy and playing with friends as their tribe’s way of life slowly returns to peacefulness.