Gold merchant Cartier’s use of Amazon tribe prompts Indigenous advocates to allege hypocrisy! Yanomami say: “How can a gold jewelry company, which we Yanomami people are against, use the image of the Yanomami?” & “Anyone who buys a gold ring is part of the crime!”

Is this you?

Yanomami children suffering from malnutrition and mercury poisoning directly linked with gold mining.

Cartier/Foundation Cartier publicity

Fabiano Maisonnave’s article for AP is here:

https://apnews.com/article/brazil-amazon-gold-indigenous-yanomami-cartier-venezuela-6533687f2da0ea66a4bd72e8f211de69

In fact, Alain Dominique Perrin was President of the Cartier gold jewelry, watch and accessories company from 1975 to 1998. The Cartier Foundation was created in 1984 on the initiative of Perrin who said in 1986: “Sponsorship is not just a great communication tool, but much more than that; it is a tool for seducing opinion.”

In 2004, one year after the exhibition “Yanomami, the spirit of the forest” Hervé Chandès, the director of the Cartier Foundation explained in an interview for parisart, without ambiguity, how closely the Fondation Cartier is supervised by the luxury gold and diamond jewelry, watches and accessories merchant Cartier:
– To give us an idea, what are the operating costs required by an establishment like this?
“The Foundation is private, entirely funded by Cartier for its communications. To give a broad estimate, the general budget – operating and programming – varies around five million euros.”
– What relationship does the Foundation have with the Cartier company?
“It is a very close, simple and structured relationship. The Foundation has a mission to fulfill for which it has been entrusted and specifications to be respected. The Foundation reports regularly on its activities to the company with which it works hand in hand. We maintain close relations with Cartier.“

For over five centuries, Indigenous people, trees and the rest of nature in colonized countries have paid the price for the relentless avidity for gold, diamonds and other luxury items.

In the past four years, over 570 Yanomami children under the age of five have died from preventable diseases which are directly linked to illegal gold mining. President Lula accused his predecessor, Bolsonaro, of encouraging the tens of thousands of wildcat gold miners who invaded Yanomami Lands during his term and ignoring Indigenous communities’ repeated appeals for help. It has been declared a genocide.

Cartier represents the commodity fetishism of luxury jewelry – items that are functionally useless to human society. Can they really care about the forest and Indigenous people while they continue to sell gold to the world?

Photomontage: POD

Here’s a short film on tiktok that summarizes the issue:

New 1:39 film on TikTok! – Cartier accused of Greenwashing after using images of Indigenous Yanomami tribe devastated by illegal gold mining without their permission!

Cartier also pretends to support, not only the Yanomami, but also Nature and the Environment – while they attempt to sell you « watches and wonders, high jewelry, and the art of living »?

About Barbara Crane Navarro - Rainforest Art Project

I'm a French artist living near Paris. From 1968 to 1973 I studied at Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, Rhode Island, then at the San Francisco Art Institute in San Francisco, California, for my BFA. My work for many decades has been informed and inspired by time spent with indigenous communities. Various study trips devoted to the exploration of techniques and natural pigments took me originally to the Dogon of Mali, West Africa, and subsequently to Yanomami communities in Venezuela and Brazil. Over many years, during the winters, I studied the techniques of traditional Bogolan painting. Hand woven fabric is dyed with boiled bark from the Wolo tree or crushed leaves from other trees, then painted with mud from the Niger river which oxidizes in contact with the dye. Through the Dogon and the Yanomami, my interest in the multiplicity of techniques and supports for aesthetic expression influenced my artistic practice. The voyages to the Amazon Rainforest have informed several series of paintings created while living among the Yanomami. The support used is roughly woven canvas prepared with acrylic medium then textured with a mixture of sand from the river bank and lava. This supple canvas is then rolled and transported on expeditions into the forest. They are then painted using a mixture of acrylic colors and Achiote and Genipap, the vegetal pigments used by the Yanomami for their ritual body paintings and on practical and shamanic implements. My concern for the ongoing devastation of the Amazon Rainforest has inspired my films and installation projects. Since 2005, I've created a perfomance and film project - Fire Sculpture - to bring urgent attention to Rainforest issues. To protest against the continuing destruction, I've publicly set fire to my totemic sculptures. These burning sculptures symbolize the degradation of nature and the annihilation of indigenous cultures that depend on the forest for their survival.

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