Context: From the remote rainforests of Brazil, the little-known Yanomami tribe has made an emotional appeal to Indians not to buy the gold which has come from Yanomami territory. 

• Return to the rainforest: A son's search for his Amazonian mother - BBC News

Why the appeal to Indians?

• Gold mined illegally in Yanomami land has most likely been coming to India since at least 2018 – “but it could be earlier than this as it has been traded on the black market for years”.
• India is “the fourth largest importer of Brazilian gold in the world”.

The Yanomami People

• The Yanomami live in the rainforests and mountains of northern Brazil and southern Venezuela, and are, according to Survival International, the largest relatively isolated tribe in South America.
• Survival International is an international human rights advocacy based in London, which campaigns for the rights of indigenous and tribal peoples around the world.
• The Yanomami live in large, circular houses called yanos or shabonos, some of which can hold up to 400 people.

Yanomami Indigenous Territory

• It is a Yanomami custom that a hunter does not eat the meat he has killed. He shares it out among friends and family. In return, he will be given meat by another hunter.
• The Yanomami consider all people to be equal, and do not have a chief. Instead, all decisions are based on consensus after long discussions and debates.
• Following a sustained campaign led by Survival International, the Brazilian government notified a ‘Yanomami Park’ in 1992.

What now for Yanomami

• The tribe has launched an initiative called "MinersOutCovidOut" to enlist the support of Brazilian society and the international community to lobby the Brazilian government to take urgent action to remove the miners and to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

About Amazon Rainforests

• These are large tropical rainforest occupying the drainage basin of the Amazon River and its tributaries in northern South America and covering an area of 6,000,000 square km.
• Tropical forests are closed-canopy forests growing within 28 degrees north or south of the equator.
• They are very wet places, receiving more than 200 cm rainfall per year, either seasonally or throughout the year.
• Temperatures are uniformly high - between 20°C and 35°C.
• Such forests are found in Asia, Australia, Africa, South America, Central America, Mexico and on many of the Pacific Islands.
• Comprising about 40% of Brazil’s total area, it is bounded by the Guiana Highlands to the north, the Andes Mountains to the west, the Brazilian central plateau to the south, and the Atlantic Ocean to the east.

Additional Information

• Brazil is home to an estimated 8,00,000 indigenous people from more than 300 ethnic groups.
• Guarani, Kaingang, Pataxó Hã Hã Hãe Tupinambá, Yanomami, Tikuna and Akuntsu are popular tribe of Amazon.

Yanomami Tribe

• Yanomami, also called South American Indians, live in the remote forest of the Orinoco River basin in southern Venezuela and the northernmost reaches of the Amazon River basin in northern Brazil.
• They numbered around 27,000 individuals throughout their range.
• Yanomami live in small, scattered, semi permanent villages and speak the Xirianá language.
• They practice hunting and slash-and-burn agriculture.
• It can be noted that recently, a Brazilian indigenous leader Davi Kopenawa who secured the land rights of the Yanomami people was awarded the Right Livelihood Award-2019, also known as Sweden's alternative Nobel Prize.