Rainforest Hero
Street Art Break in VR
When Eduardo Kobra painted this mural of Raoni Metuktire in 2017, the Kayapo chief was in his mid-80s, enjoying retirement. He had lost some battles over the years but he also won some major victories over encroaching settlers, corrupt politicians, and rapacious global corporations.
Two years later, approaching the age of 90, he was back on the front lines of environmental combat after Jair Bolsonaro, sworn enemy of the rain forest and indigenous people, was elected President of Brazil.
Raoni Metuktire is not a hero to those who believe we can all do just fine without the rain forest and the people who live there. Bolsonaro himself has stated that indigenous people in Brazil should have been exterminated.
Many others disagree and believe that the Amazon Rain forest is critical at every scale, critical to the people who live there, including the Kayapo people, and critical to the planet, as a massive atmospheric regulator that costs us nothing. Since losing it costs us everything, Raoni Metuktire has been a true hero for 50 years to people all over the world.
This large public mural is a form of recognition for his heroism. Hero street art is not quite the same as celebrity street art, but they frequently come together, as they do in this life story that no one could have predicted during the first two decades.
Raoni Metuktire grew up continually travelling around the northern Amazon rain forest with a nomadic tribe. He encountered people from the non-rain forest world for the first time in his early 20s, when a famous anthropologist met the tribe and taught him Portuguese, in 1954.
He went on to make deforestation a cause of concern long before climate change was on most people’s radar. The 1978 film, “Raoni: The Fight for the Amazon” was nominated for Best Documentary Feature. Marlon Brando helped by appearing in the film for free.
By 1989 Raoni Metuktire was driving a full-scale international movement, aided by Sting who visited him in the rain forest and held press conferences in Brazil and around the world. He wasn’t just working to save the rain forest — by his intelligence and powerful presence he was undermining stereotypes of all indigenous people
One of the first projects supported by the new Rainforest Foundation was the demarcation of the Kayapo land. It feels ironic that indigenous lands, which are living and dynamic and borderless need borders. They need borders to protect what they have from endless further encroachment.
Raoni Metuktire opposed the forces that were trying to destroy his world, while he also used their laws and treaties to protect his people. When the demarcation of Kayapo land was completed, he began to relax.
Bolsonaro declared war right away, staffing all environmental agencies with former police and military officers obedient to him and effectively ending the prosecution of crimes against nature. Deforestation shot up while fines disappeared.
Raoni Metuktire lost his wife of 60 years and survived a hard case of Covid in 2020.
Then he fought back, along with another indigenous Chief, Almir Narayamoga Suruí of the Paiter Surui tribe.
In January, 2021, Metuktire and Surui submitted a Request for Investigation into Bolsonaro’s actions against the rain forest to the International Criminal Court’s Office of the Prosecutor. It would be the first prosecution for environmental damage as an international crime against humanity.
In 2022, Greenpeace and others joined to support the request, presenting reports showing how livelihoods, culture and survival of Indigenous groups are directly linked to the natural environment. Intentional ecological harm represents an attack on people who live in affected areas. That perspective also applies to the rest of humanity, because of the Amazon’s key role in storing carbon.
The possibility of “Eco-cide” as an international crime in this case rests on three claims:
- an unsafe atmosphere is being created intentionally to displace people there
- environmental damage is a threat to livelihood of people there
- Amazon Rain Forest environmental damage is a threat to people everywhere
Evidence was provided to the ICC detailing:
- 12,000 land or water-related conflicts in the Brazilian Amazon over the past 10 years
- resulting in 430 murders and 554 attempted murders
- plus 2,290 death threats
- 87 cases of torture, and
- over 100,000 expulsions or evictions.
They followed their submission with a worldwide webcast. Raoni Metuktire described it as his final mission. All his work at protecting tribal land was threatened. “I’m very old but I have to do this,” he said on the webcast.
Bolsonaro has repeatedly responded that the rain forest is Brazil’s sovereign territory and other countries have no right to interfere with how it is used.
Bolsonaro recently lost the 2022 Presidential election and will probably be leaving office after a disastrous four year run of death and destruction.
His successor, Lula de Silva, has supported efforts in the past to preserve the rain forest, but he will have a difficult time slowing down a runaway juggernaut. Bolsonaro was narrowly defeated and the forces that support him are still present, still in the process of destroying the Rain forest as quickly as possible before they are stopped.
Like some individuals don’t like being told what to-do and what not-to-do during a pandemic, some nations take a similar position. Since our actions have consequences for each other, the planet needs a way to regulate its member nations.
Raoni Metuktire is still a powerful presence, and a colorful one with his headdresses and his large lip plate. While stretched lips is associated with females in parts of Africa, among some Amazon tribes it is young males around the age of 15 who may choose to begin the process.
Raoni Metuktire was one of the last of his generation to wear a lip plate. It is said that the largest lip plates are worn by the best orators.
He stayed with indigenous life and traditions — and still learned how to win, sometimes, at his enemies’ own game.
Tom’s work has not appeared in The New York Times, New Yorker Magazine, The New Republic, the New England Journal of Medicine, or anything New at all.
He only publishes in obscure journals and, once upon a time, PBS Program Guides. Otherwise he just gives his work a URL and sends it packing on the web at places like Medium and Sub-Stack, where he enjoys a modest following.
