It is in the Piaú village, in the Toototobi region, on the border between the State of Amazonas and Venezuela, that the Yanomami people perform on Friday afternoon (03) the official return ceremony to the families of the blood samples collected, without authorization from the ethnicity, by US researchers and sent to US laboratories 48 years ago. The indigenous people, who are celebrating, have been fighting for the repatriation of genetic material since 2000.
In this part of the Yanomami Indigenous Land, access is by a trip of about two hours by plane from Boa Vista (RR). Participating in the ceremony are indigenous people from villages in both countries and guests, including representatives of the National Indian Foundation, the Federal Public Ministry, author of the action that demanded the repatriation of blood from American laboratories, as reported to the agency. amazon Real .
For the Yanomami people, the blood collected improperly from around 3,000 Indians is the remains of the ethnic group, whose custom is to cremate the dead and their belongings. Before the trip to Toototobi, the leader Davi Kopenawa Yanomami told the report of Real Amazon in a telephone interview, what the indigenous people will do with the blood samples within the culture and traditional custom.
“Many of the relatives who had their blood stolen died from the measles epidemic. But there are survivors of this epidemic who live in Toototobi. We will remember those relatives who died. Let’s do a big cry. Then we’re going to bury those samples with the blood in a hole and plug it up. This place will become sacred to the Yanomami People,” said Davi Kopenawa Yanomami.
Toototobi is one of the regions of the Amazon reserve that, according to MPF action, from 1967 to 1970 the geneticist James Van Gundia Nell and the anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon collected blood from the Yanomami. Davi Kopenawa Yanomami, who was born in Toototobi, said he was a boy, but he remembers very well what happened at the time.
“These Americans stole our blood when I was little, about ten, 11 years old. They took my blood too. They didn’t say anything in our language about the tests they were going to do. Nobody knew that they were going to use our blood for research,” said the Yanomami leader.
The report of Real Amazon sent questions to the Attorney General’s Office and the Federal Public Ministry of Roraima, but these institutions did not answer questions about: total samples returned, how was the repatriation process, which laboratories and universities returned the genetic material and whether there is still blood of the Yanomami in American institutions. As soon as the MPF discloses this information, we will update this report.
Symbolic delivery: Dário and Davi with the Attorney General of the Republic, Rodrigo Janot, and the Deputy Attorney, Deborah Duprat (Photo: Hutukara)
For Davi Kopenawa Yanomami, the return of blood samples does not end the action against researchers and laboratories. According to the lawsuit, James Nell and Napoleon Chagnon collected more than 12,000 blood samples from about 3,000 Yanomami indigenous people and sent them to laboratories at US universities.
“It was very shocking and quite sad what happened. We need to know what research the Americans have done with our blood. The Brazilian government has to explain to our community. Let’s talk to the authorities about what the Brazilian government is going to do to repair the moral damage to the traditional culture of our people,” said Davi Kopenawa Yanomami.
According to the lawsuit filed by the Federal Public Ministry in Roraima in 2005, the Yanomami people discovered that blood samples were collected from the indigenous people, without authorization, when the American journalist Patrick Tierney released the book “Darkness in the Eldorado”, in the year 2000.
In the book, the journalist denounced that the North Americans, geneticist James Van Gundia Nell and anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon, collected more than 12,000 blood samples from about 3,000 Yanomami indigenous people. The case became an international scientific controversy.
The MPF investigation says that one of Nell and Chagnon’s goals with the blood samples was to research people who had never been exposed to artificial radiation at the Atomic Energy Commission of the United States of America (AEC).
In an article, anthropologist Débora Diniz, from the University of Brasília (UnB), said that the case was a paradigm for ethics in research with human beings. “Yanomami blood is the backdrop for the discussion of central questions about the participation of vulnerable populations in scientific research in the Humanities and Health Sciences,” she said.
Samples of Yanomami blood returned in 2006 (Photo: Jankiel de Campos/MPF-RR)
In 2006, the Federal Public Ministry in Roraima recovered blood samples from 90 Yanomami Indians from the Federal University of Pará (UFPA). The case did not involve the US researchers. As reported by Agência Brasil, the samples were collected in 1990 without the consent of the indigenous people.
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