Amazing Amazon lifestyle
This tribe doesn’t need any money because the jungles and rivers are their free shopping centre.
WHEN Japarupi Waiapi looks into the dense foliage of the Amazon rainforest, he sees the equivalent of a supermarket, pharmacy, furniture store etc (all rolled into one). And that’s just the beginning.
Food, like coconuts, roots and bananas, grows plentifully. Animals and fish are readily available for hunting, and the barks of many trees have medicinal uses.
“We see thatch for our roofs, we see bows, we see arrow heads,” describes Japarupi Waiapi, 45, about different wood types in the heart of Waiapi tribal land in eastern Brazil.
Add to that, palm for weaving backpacks, calabash for making bowls, reeds to use as drinking straws, banana leaves as table cloths, animal bones for tools – and all this literally there for the taking (for free).
“We don’t depend on commerce or money,” Japarupi says, explaining the tribe’s ancient, self-sufficient way of life, living in isolation from Brazil’s white settlers.
“I tell my son: never put out your hand to the white man. Rely on the forest. Rely on the rivers.”
The Waiapi also believe that just as the planet’s biggest rainforest looks after them, their tribe of 1,200 people is uniquely positioned to guard the Amazon, crucial to regulating global climate, for the rest of the world.
For decades, the Waiapi and other indigenous tribes have been under pressure from miners, ranchers and loggers, who consider the “Indians” as they are universally known in Brazil, a nuisance at best.
Pressure intensified this August when President Michel Temer declared a vast protected reserve around Waiapi territory, called Renca, open to foreign mining.
Temer had to retreat a month later in the face of withering criticism from environmentalists. But the Waiapi say they will keep