Shamanic Calling

The Falling Sky is an impressive book of first-person narration of the life story and philosophical thought of Davi Kopenawa, shaman and spokesperson for the Yanomami of the Brazilian Amazon. The book is also a cosmic manifesto. His stories and reflections present an unheard version, compressed poetic and dramatic intensity, as well as humorous and plain-spoken language, direct and to the point. It presents a historic confrontation between Amerindians and the fringe of our “civilization.”

The Yanomami are a society of hunter-gatherers and slash-and-burn farmers who occupy an area of tropical forest comprising approximately 192,000 square kilometers located on both sides of the Serra Perima range, which divides the waters of the upper Orinoco (south of Venezuela) and the tributaries of the right bank of the Rio Branco and of the left of the Rio Negro (in northern Brazil).

They entail a large and isolated cultural and linguistic group, subdivided into several languages and related dialects. Total population estimated to be slightly more than 33,000 people. This makes them one of the largest Amerindian groups in the Amazon that continue to hold mostly to their traditional way of life.

The Yanomami territory in Brazil, legally recognized in 1992 as the Terra Indigena Yanomami, extends over 96,650 square kilometers. Their population of approximately 16,000 people is distributed among some 230 local groups. Davi Kopenawa has convinced these different groups that they need to unite to battle through the courts and enlist the people around the world to support their struggle against the white men forcing their way into their land and communities.

Davi Kopenawa’s narrative goes beyond prevailing canons of autobiography—our own or those of the Yanomami. His accounts of key episodes in his life inseparably intertwine personal events and collective history. Moreover, he always expresses himself through complex overlapping genres and styles: myths and dream stories, shamanic visions and prophecies, autoethnography and cross-cultural comparison…

The book contains three parts: 1) “Becoming Other,” discusses Davi Kopenawa’s shamanic calling. It describes in detail Yanomami shamanic cosmology and the multiple tasks of the Yanomami shaman, disclosing the knowledge acquired by learning from his elders, 2) “Metal Smoke,” deals with different encounters with white people, 3) “The Falling Sky,” traces in reverse order, Davi Kopenawa’s journeys—in Brazil, then Europe, and later the United States.

Davi Kopenawa’s narrative is the first inside account of Yanomami society and culture published in English. He says that the first shaman of his people, Omama, created the land and the forest, the wind and the rivers whose water they drink. His elders made the people hear his name from the beginning. Davi Kopenawa mentions it is Omama who gave them life and created many of us.

But the central view of Davi Kopenawa’s words in this volume is found in this excerpt that he declares rather forcefully:

The mind of the white people’s great men only contain the drawing of tangled words they stare at on their paper skins. They remain stopped…, and it is impossible for them to really know the forest. This is why they do not worry about destroying it! They tell themselves that it grew by itself and that it covers the ground without reason.

He sees that white people have little sense of the connectedness of all things in the universe and that they could easily destroy every living tree and plant on earth. He reminds us that “White people do not become shamans. Their…image of life is full of dizziness. The perfumes they rub themselves with and the alcohol they drink make their chest too odorous and too hot. This is why it remains empty.”

Davi Kopenawa speaks for a people whose very existence is seriously threatened. His story describes in vivid detail a picture of Yanomami culture, past and present, in the heart of the rain forest—a place where ancient indigenous knowledge and shamanic...