‘Disappearance’ of indigenous community sheds light on Yanomami gold mining drama

The mysterious fate of a small Yanomami indigenous community in the northern Brazilian state of Roraima left much of the country puzzled, outraged, and keen for answers in recent weeks. 

On April 28, in response to allegations that a 12-year-old Yanomami girl had been raped and murdered by gold miners after being taken from a village on the Aracaçá River, agents from the Federal Police and indigenous authorities visited the community and were left dumbstruck by what they found. The village had been torched, and the 25-strong community was nowhere to be seen.

Júnior Hekurari Yanomami, an indigenous leader and head of the Yanomami and Ye’kwana Indigenous Health Board (Condisi-YY), took part in the visit and told newspaper Folha de S. Paulo that he had encountered an illegal mining camp just 500 meters from the deserted village. The group spoke to two indigenous people in the area, who Júnior said “were terrified of saying anything.”

“I asked where the community was, and they said they were in the woods. They’d been trained on what to say, I noticed that,” he said.

In a subsequent statement from Condisi, the organization said it encountered Yanomami indigenous people who refused to talk about the crimes, as they had “received five grams of gold from the miners to keep silent.”

After the death of one of their own, some Yanomami groups are known to cremate the body before abandoning their village in search of a new camp, but heightened tensions between the indigenous and nearby gold miners suggests they may not have left of their own volition.

A video shot by gold miners circulated on social media in the days prior to the group’s disappearance. It showed the trespassers apparently coercing Yanomami residents to deny allegations of the 12-year-old girl’s rape and murder.

On social media, posts asking “Where are the Yanomami?” gained huge traction, with prominent politicians and even one Supreme Court...