The Falling Sky: Words of a Yanomami Shaman

This memoir is the culmination of a long collaboration between Kopenawa, a Yanomami shaman from northern Brazil's rain forest, and French anthropologist Albert (research director, Institut de Recherche pour le Développement, Paris), who spent many years among the Yanomami. Kopenawa provides a fascinating glimpse into his life as well as into Yanomami cultural beliefs and practices, setting his story against the various threats the Yanomami people and their forest have faced since the 1960s—highway construction, a gold rush, the encroachment of Brazilian farmers and ranchers, and epidemics of introduced infectious diseases. Albert translated Kopenawa's words into French for the original edition, published in 2010, and the work has now been translated into English. Highlights include Kopenawa's initiation into shamanism, his own and his tribe's interactions with white Brazilians, and his travels within Brazil and abroad to speak about the importance of protecting the Amazon rain forest. He includes a strong warning to people outside of the Yanomami world about the dangers of materialism and land destruction.