DEATH MANAGEMENT TECHNOLOGIES AND POLITICS OF LIFE

WORD-IMAGES OF MINING IN YANOMAMI TERRITORY

Abstract

Over the last few years, mining activity in indigenous lands has increased dramatically, causing wide-ranging socio-environmental impacts on the forest and its entire living tissue. Although illegal gold exploration in indigenous lands is not new, the presence of gold miners in those places has been chronic and overt since at least the 1970s. Under the terms of the Brazilian Federal Constitution of 1988, mining in indigenous lands is illegal, as those lands are intended for the exclusive enjoyment of indigenous peoples and communities. The activity, which is encouraged by social and political groups with diferente interests, has given rise to a series of other illegal actions and impacted both the environment and the indigenous communities, thus compromising their quality of life and the autonomous management of their territories. Considering the wide range of grievances and violations of rights that have materialized through illegal mining in indigenous lands, this text is specifically aimed at discussing some of these practices in the Yanomami Indigenous Land, located between the states of Roraima and Amazon. By taking the concept of necropolitics as an argumentative axis, it discusses how the invasion by miners, the omission of public authorities and the negligence of the State have operated together on the management of death, turning indigenous existences into “killable lives”. As a counterpoint, it also presents word-images by Davi Kopenawa Yanomami, which are understood as a performative force of the politics of life from a decolonial perspective.