Members of the Yanomami ethnic group wear face masks as they await tests for COVID-19 -- some tribe members have lost loved ones and been unable to practice their ancestral funeral rites AFP/NELSON ALMEIDAMONTEVIDEO: The indigenous peoples of the Amazon have already seen their homelands ravaged by illegal deforestation, industrial farming, mining, oil exploration and unlawful occupation of their ancestral territories.
Around three million indigenous people - members of 400 tribes - live there, according to the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization . Around 60 of those tribes live in total isolation.The following is a look back over at how the novel coronavirus spread through the Amazon jungle, and how those communities are handling the crisis.Carauari is home to one of the most isolated communities in the world, and is only accessible by a week-long boat ride from Manaus, the nearest major city.
No one in Carauari had forgotten how diseases brought by European colonisers ripped through the native populations in the Americas, nearly eliminating them altogether due to their lack of immunity. "There are no doctors in our communities. There is no protective gear to aid prevention," Jose Gregorio Diaz Mirabal, the elected leader of the collective of Amazon indigenous organizations, said in late April.
"If the virus gets into the forest, we don't have a way to get help to them. The distances are so huge. The indigenous people will be abandoned," said the 76-year-old. They"preferred to take everything they had with them into the forest and avoid contact with others", said resident Bene Mayuruna, who was amongst the few who stayed.
The area covers 5,000 ha in northern Brazil near the Peruvian and Colombian borders, and is home to about 7,000 people. The Satere Mawe remedies include teas made from the bark of the carapanauba tree, which has anti-inflammatory properties, or the saracuramira tree, an anti-malarial.In Manaus, Maria Nunes Sinimbu saw five members of her family die of COVID-19 in less than a month, including three of her 12 children.
In Colombia's Amazon, some tribal elders fear that COVID-19 deaths among the elderly will deprive younger generations of key ancestral knowledge AFP/Tatiana de Nevó Graves are seen in July 2020 at the Nossa Senhora Aparecida cemetery in Manaus, Brazil -- some fear that indigenous communities could be annihilated by the coronavirus epidemic AFP/MICHAEL DANTAS
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