Witness

Holding Up the Sky: Saving the Indigenous Yanomami tribe in Brazil’s Amazon

A Brazilian tribal leader warns that illegal mining in forests will have dire consequences for the rest of the world.

Davi Kopenawa is a tribal chief and spokesman for the cause of the Indigenous Yanomami people of the Brazilian Amazon. Their territory has been officially protected since the 1990s, but during the presidency of Jair Bolsonaro, there was a huge increase in illegal gold mining – and it now threatens to destroy everything. Davi seeks support to stop illegal mining from wiping out his people. He appeals to lawmakers in Europe to put pressure on the Brazilian government. His message is that the world needs to heed the warnings of Indigenous people, the true protectors of the Earth, before it is too late. Holding Up the Sky is a documentary film by Pieter Van Eecke.