What do kayapo wear

The Kayapo are split into many groups, resulting in different dialects of their language. Beauty is valued highly in the Kayapo culture. A beautiful name is seen as a sign of wealth. The tribe will move and re-construct their camp in order to find the materials required to undertake the naming ceremony, sufficient food sources for celebration must be gathered and presented to the father of the new-born.

The Kayapo possess varying knowledge of Portuguese, depending on the individual groups and their history of contact with outsiders. The resource patterns of the Kayapo are non-destructive to the resource base but require a very large area of land. The Kayapo people use shifting cultivation , a type of farming where land is cultivated for a few years, after which the people move to a new area.

New farmland is cleared and the old farm is allowed to replenish itself. The particular type of shifting agriculture employed most frequently by the Kayapo is the slash and burn technique.

This process allows forested areas to be cut down and burned in order for cultivation of the lands to take place. These new fields peak in production of principal crops in two or three years but continue to reproduce for many years; e. Old fields are important for their concentration of medicinal plants. With the spread of indigenous groups, trail-side plantings and forest fields were also used for cultivating crops.

Trails systems were extensive in the area and were used for transporting and growing crops along their borders. The Kayapo use approximately different food plants and different medicinal plants that they find around their village. It is cultivated under that name in Japan, and has been found to have health benefits. They also have trade agreements with The Body Shop. The Kayapo have incorporated a great deal of traditional myth, ritual and cosmology into their practices honouring the importance of the earth's relationship with the people.

Threats to the forest home of the Kayapo have been an area of extreme concern in the last 30 years, beginning with mining and logging enterprises which threatened to destroy the rain forest, and thus the Kayapos' way of life. In the village of Gorotire, the Kayapo made a deal with prospectors that mining could take place as long as they received a percentage of the mining proceeds and had their territory divided.

The gold mining operation was initially seen as a positive development, which brought money into the local economy. With money filtering into the economy, better housing, improved education and a resulting level of health were achieved. However, the initial benefits of mining also resulted in high levels of pollution in the area which seeped into water ways and nearby river banks and destroyed local fish populations with high quantities of mercury. In addition to striking environmental threats, social habits began to change with the introduction of outside influences in the area.

This increased interaction with outside groups elevated the levels of disease, which posed an imminent threat to the people because of their relative seclusion and limited access to medical care. However, through mass protest the Kayapo were able to draw support from international figureheads, celebrities and the global media. The protests culminated in a mass rally in Altamira in February of that drew the eyes of the world to the threat they faced and, eventually, the World Bank was pressured into denying the loan that would have funded the creation of the dams.

In May , almost 20 years after their successful protest, the Kayapo are facing the prospect of damming once again. The proposal of a huge hydroelectric dam spanning the Xingu River a southern tributary of the Amazon threatens their homes and environment once more. It would see the world's third largest hydroelectric dam affect an estimated 10, indigenous peoples as well as the many ribeirinhos, small farmers and rural settlers in the proposed area.

Feelings against the dam run high, and there was a large gathering of indigenous people in the town of Altamira at a protest rally held on and around 20 May Representatives from some of the electrical companies were present and Bruce and the crew met tribespeople and others to hear the debate, during which they filmed the discussions below.

During the protest the Kayapo wore their warrior dress, which includes carrying knives, bow and arrows. A Kayapo woman cut a representative from one of the electrical companies on the top of the arm after a scuffle following a speech that had caused offence to many of the indigenous people present.

The Kayapo have said they will fight to death to defend their land. The Brazilian Government has been accused of abandoning much of their previous commitment to Environmental and Human Rights legislature by supporting the dam's creation.

They have been described as bowing under increasing pressure from international mining and metallurgy companies but companies involved in the dam claim that the dam will create jobs and provide an essential energy infrastructure to meet the demands of South America's most prosperous nation.

Yet independent experts have claimed that the Belo Monte Dam will be one of the least efficient in the world. During the dry season that lasts around three to four months, the dam's turbines will cease to operate, as water levels will be too low. This, many point out, will require the creation of at least four other dams further upstream to store water and generate power for the mining and metallurgical industries growing in the area.

Proponents of the dam have argued that hydroelectricity is a 'green' source of energy at a time when fossil fuels are diminishing but many recent studies have revealed an alarming series of statistics. Measurements taken from dams in Canada and French Guiana show huge quantities of greenhouse gas emissions, the worst examples being dams with shallow reservoirs in tropical areas; areas such as those found along the Xingu River. Not only is the construction of massive dam projects highly energy intensive, the areas filled by the dam produce massive amounts of methane, carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide as submerged vegetation decomposes.

Equally importantly, dams will lead to population displacement, disruption of migratory fish routes, sedimentary pollution and the altering of the waterway's chemistry. The creation of dams may also lead to the spread of diseases. It is argued Kayapo and other inhabitants of the areas near the stagnant waterways would face increased cases of malaria and dengue, something already seen near the Tucurui Dam km to the southwest.

International Rivers Summary of the plans for hydroelectric dams on the Xingu River. Google Classroom Facebook Twitter.

Video transcript piano music - [Voiceover] I'm in the British Museum with Jago Cooper, and we're looking at this gorgeous, brilliant yellow headdress. It's actually quite big. It's probably almost a meter in height and maybe 60cm in width. So, this is a headdress that is used as a rite of passage ceremony. There would have been a string across the middle, and it would be wrapped around the child's head. So it's actually quite a recent acquisition.

This is a 20th century object. It came in in , after a lot of tension on the Kayapo about a dam building project in the region that brought the world's attention to this very, very remote place. So we're basically in the south central portion of the Amazon, between the upper and lower Amazon, and the Xingu is a big river which runs from the south into the Amazon, and the Kayapo live on the tributaries and on the banks of the Xingu.

This is a river and landscape in deep tropical forests. However, as expansion, and drive of industrialized life has encroached on the Amazon, this is one of those tribes who's been impacted upon. What this object represents is a way of life that has existed for thousands of years, and the continuation of those practices. But it comes from a time period of great change.

Are they dyed? Or are these natural colors? So you do get some feathers which are dyed by peoples in different parts of the world, but in the Amazon, because you get such wonderful birds, and such beautiful, brilliant colors, there's no need to dye them. So those red and blue feathers at the top are from a Macaw. And the yellow feathers are from a Psarocolius Decumanus. It's the scientific name for these species of birds. It's incredible also thinking about the number of birds which are often used to create one of these.