Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – With yellow and green feathers radiating from his headdress, Davi Kopenawa strode along the parade route with a mission in mind.
All around him, the city of Rio de Janeiro was alive with music and revelry. It was his February 12th and the world's largest carnival celebration was being held. But Kopenawa wasn't in town for the party.
Rather, he traveled more than 3,500 kilometers (2,000 miles) from his village in Brazil's Amazon rainforest to spread a dire message that his people, the Yanomami, are in danger.
The indigenous Yanomami people have suffered for decades at the hands of illegal gold miners. They destroyed vast areas of their homeland and contaminated rivers with mercury.
But since 2019, the crisis has reached new heights, with hundreds of Yanomami people dying from mining-related conditions. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva went so far as to declare the situation a “genocide.”
“Every day we face death in our villages and attacks from illegal miners,” Kopenawa, a shaman, told Al Jazeera.
So this year, Kopenawa and other indigenous leaders took an unusual step. They teamed up with Salgueiro, one of his famous samba schools in Rio, to carry out an awareness campaign in the midst of the annual Carnival festivities.
The results were announced early Monday at the Sambadrome, one of the main destinations for Carnival parades.
A float dedicated to the “People of the Forest” made its way down the wide parade avenue of the Sunboard Dome, surrounded by stands filled with thousands of spectators.
Some of the floats featured larger-than-life paintings of indigenous people, arms outstretched as if taking flight above the sidewalk. However, one float represented the death and destruction wrought by the miners, complete with a feathered headdress crowned with a skull.
