Maïka Sondarjee is an assistant professor at the School of International Development and Global Studies at the University of Ottawa. She directed the collective work Feminist approaches in international relations (PUM, 2022), and she wrote the book lose the south (Écosociété Editions, 2020).
A lone man died at his home last month, in the middle of the Amazon rainforest. Lying on his hammock, covered with feathers. the New York Youmare reports that the so-called “man in the hole” was around 60 years old and was the last indigenous inhabitant of the protected territory Tanaru, in the state of Rondônia, Brazil. Sole survivor of his tribe, the sexagenarian had built a few dozen huge holes on his territory, and this, for unexplained reasons. By disappearing, he brought with him the traditions and ancestral customs of his people.
The Brazilian agency for the protection of indigenous populations (Fundação Nacional do Índio, FUNAI) considers that there are at least 114 isolated groups in Brazil, but has only confirmed the existence of 28 of them. This leaves approximately 86 indigenous groups without any government support or protection.
FUNAI tried to contact the man with the holes in the 1990s, but stopped trying when he saw that he refused any communication. The other members of his tribe had almost all been killed by attacks from illegal loggers or people working for companies who wanted to appropriate the territory.
In March 2021, a similar case. Arukà Juma, the last survivor of his village of the same name along the Açuá River, also passed away. Although Juma died of COVID-19, all of his compatriots were killed in massacres aimed at claiming their ancestral Amazon lands. They were 15,000 in the XVIIIe century, 100 in 1943 and more than six following an attack in 1964. He was the only one to speak the Juma language fluently, so his disappearance brings with him a series of words and traditions.
The era of the human
The report of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services reported in 2019 that nearly 25% of plant or animal species known to humans are or will be threatened with extinction in the short or medium term. Vertebrate species (mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish), meanwhile, halved between 1970 and 2010, according to the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).
According to HEC researcher Yves-Marie Abraham, the erosion of biodiversity represents a form of self-destruction for humans. He recalls that during the last mass extinction 65 million years ago, no animal over 25 kg survived, and therefore that in the event of a mass extinction, humans would also pass: “The problem is that our lives depend closely and in many ways on these other living beings with whom we share the planet.”
Many associate this destruction of the planet with the Anthropocene (sometimes called the “age of the human”, although Abraham reminds us that not all humans destroy the planet in the same way). the Larousse defines the Anthropocene as: “A current period of geological time, where human activities have strong repercussions on the ecosystems of the planet (biosphere) and transform them at all levels. »
The Anthropocene is therefore a broader phenomenon than the climate crisis, something more fundamental. This is the geological era beginning after the Holocene and which underlines the planetary consequences of human activities (or, at least, of most of its civilizations since many indigenous populations are still guardians of their territories). These human consequences affect the atmosphere, the hydrosphere, the biosphere; in a word, everything that surrounds us and composes us. Some research believes that the Industrial Revolution propelled these destructive mechanisms of the Anthropocene. In short, human activity could well lead us to our downfall.
Destroying an ecosystem that includes us
The deaths of the Hole Man, Arukà Juma and hundreds of other indigenous people of the Amazon in recent decades demonstrate that we are part of this biodiversity that we are destroying. In addition to animal and plant species, the Anthropocene is leading to the extinction of entire human groups. This is not direct colonization orchestrated by the state, but a form of destruction linked to our modes of energy production and consumption.
This system of production, accelerated by less conscientious leaders such as the Brazilian President, Jair Bolsonaro, encourages the sale of immense sections of the Amazon for excessive cutting, the sale of our basements to mining companies, or even the displacement of indigenous populations for the establishment of hydroelectric dams. Bolsonaro has repeatedly asserted that the Amazon is “open for business”, rather than protected for its people.
In his latest book, Heal from evil of infinity, Abraham criticizes this obsession with growth: destroying more to produce more. This mentality has the effect of destroying ecosystems essential to our survival, but also of destroying the animal species it is supposed to serve: the human being. The researcher argues that Indigenous societies demonstrate a better connection to nature, compared to a system that prioritizes profit over well-being.
Another tribe in the depths of the Amazon, that of Yanomami, tries somehow to protect its territory against around 20,000 illegal miners. These incorporate mercury into the water to be able to separate the gold from the sand, which poisons vital sources. The United Nations reported the words of Dario Kopenawa, vice-president of the Hutukara Yanomami association: “Without our land, we do not exist, and without land, there is no biodiversity, rivers or animals. We indigenous people cannot survive without land. »