When Bep Karoti Xikrin fell ill with Covid-19, he refused to go to a
hospital.
The 64-year-old chief of a Xikrin indigenous village in Brazil’s Amazon
was plagued by headaches and fatigue and struggled for breath. But
according to his daughter Bekuoi Raquel, he was afraid that if he were
admitted to hospital he might never return.
Instead, he died in his village – and with him, was lost decades of
knowledge and leadership.
“He knew so much about things we haven’t even experienced,” said Bekuoi,
21. Everyone admired him. He was very loved.
As Brazil’s confirmed overall death toll from Covid-19 passes 50,000, the
virus is scything through the country’s indigenous communities, killing
chiefs, elders and traditional healers – and raising fears that alongside
the toll of human lives, the pandemic may inflict irreparable damage on
tribal knowledge of history, culture and natural medicine.
The Munduruku people alone have lost 10 sábios, or wise ones. “We always
say they are living libraries,” said Alessandra Munduruku, a tribal
leader. “It’s been very painful.”
The victims include prominent figures such as Paulinho Paiakan, a Kayapó
leader who fought alongside rock star Sting against the Belo Monte dam.
The indigenous organisation Apib has logged at least 294 Covid-19
deaths, and 5,613 coronavirus cases across 103 communities. “We are
facing extermination,” said its executive coordinator, Dinamam Afer.
Indigenous leaders such as Afer say the government of the far-right
president, Jair Bolsonaro ,is failing to protect the country’s 900,000
indigenous people – many of whom live in small communities, where dozens
often share the same house.
Afer said Brazil’s Funai indigenous agency has taken too long to send
emergency food kits to people isolating in their villages, forcing them
to risk infection by traveling to nearby towns for emergency government
payments.
Funai said it had delivered 82,000 basic food kits and 43,000 hygiene
kits.
Some leaders even blame government health workers for bringing the
virus. Katia Silene Akrãtikatêjê, 51, a chief from the Gavião tribe in
Pará state, believes she caught Covid-19 after a government health team
visited their village to give flu vaccines.
“Everyone got sick from there on,” she said.
In Brazil’s biggest reserve – the Yanomami – four people have died from
Covid-19, and 98 cases of coronavirus have been detected. The tribe has
previously been decimated by epidemics of measles and flu, and many now
fear the coronavirus is being spread by 20,000 wildcat miners – or
garimpeiros – who are overrunning the reserve.
“The garimpeiros are like measles, they don’t want to leave,” Dario
Kopenawa, vice-president of its Hutukara Yanomami Association, told the
UOL site. His father, indigenous leader Davi Kopenawa, is with one of
several Yanomami groups self-isolating deep in the forest.
On 5 June, federal prosecutors warned of federal government neglect in
protecting indigenous people from the pandemic. Celebrated indigenous
leader Raoni said Bolsonaro was “taking advantage” of the coronavirus to
eliminate indigenous people.
The government’s indigenous health service, Sesai, said it had sent
600,000 items of personal protection equipment and spent £11m fighting
Covid-19. On Tuesday the Brazilian congress approved a law aiming to
guarantee emergency help for indigenous people that needs presidential
approval.
A fifth of Brazil’s indigenous people live in the enormous state of
Amazonas, whose capital, Manaus, was recently overwhelmed by the virus –
but has the only intensive care beds in the state.
Edney Samias, 38, a chief of the Kokama people in the Amazon region of
Alto Solimões, 1,000km from Manaus, said that Covid-19 has killed 57
people in his tribe – including his own father.
Guilherme Samaias, 64, is thought to have contracted the disease when he
travelled to a nearby town to collect an emergency aid payment. When he
became ill, he was promised a medical airlift to Manaus, but it never
materialized, Samias said.
Kokama people who fall sick now stay in their villages, self-medicating
with a tea made of Amazon plants, lime, ginger, garlic – and aspirin.
“Mixing our medicine with the white man’s medicine,” Samias said.
Funai has delivered some food supplies, but Samias said that the aid
kits are only available to indigenous people who live on officially
demarcated reserves – and are too small for large families. “The whole
tribe is hungry,” he said.
In one hard-hit Amazon region, indigenous people and NGOs have worked
with local government to develop their own solutions.
After high infection rates were detected in the town with Brazil’s
highest indigenous population, São Gabriel da Cachoeira, an emergency
committee of ISA, local officials, government doctors and indigenous
association Foirn was formed.
When Funai food baskets failed to arrive, indigenous groups and local
Funai officials raised money to buy and distribute their own. The
Brazilian NGO Health Expeditionaries has set up temporary infirmaries
around this vast region with room for hammocks and oxygen concentrators
to help patients from more than 700 remote communities without sending
them to hospital.
“Our effort is to make community isolation work, to reduce transmission
and consequently, serious cases,” said Guilherme Monção, a Sesai doctor.
Now Sesai is adapting the model for other regions.
The government should cooperate more with civil society, said Marivelton
Barroso, Foirn’s president. “Nobody goes it alone in this region,” he
said.
