Nature is the True Jewel !

**Rainforest reflection, Rio Orinoco, Amazonas, Venezuela**

« CANNIBAL GOLD … Our elders did not know of money … Money does not protect us … it does not create our joy. For white people, it is different. These white people are earth eaters covered with epidemic fumes. They think they are all-powerful, but their thought is full of darkness. » – from Yanomami spokesman and shaman Davi Kopenawa, The Falling Sky

« That one special *Cartier* ring » – photo montage: series “Pas de *Cartier*” – Barbara Crane Navarro – with *Cartier* « LOVE » ring dripping symbolic blood, ad for *Cartier,* gold mining destruction photo: João Laet

« We have harmed, corrupted, and ruined…We are guilty, we have betrayed…We have robbed, we have slandered…We have perverted and led astray…We have been false…We cut ourselves off from truth, and reality exists to entertain us. We hide behind distractions & toys. » – from John Le Carré, The Tailor of Panama

Yes, but that can change…We consumers can become the change we want to see in the world when we change the way we shop and consider what we own.

How much is enough?

What makes life worthwhile? Is it having the most expensive luxury toy? Is it assuaging status anxiety – being admired for the items we own, the things that can be acquired with money?

Or could it be having the opportunity to admire, appreciate and protect Nature?

**« NO BLOOD GOLD! » –** **photo montage: series “Pas de *Cartier*” – Barbara Crane Navarro**

Giving gifts is an emotional process, too often influenced by social pressure. Showing appreciation doesn’t mean spending huge sums of money on flashy luxury items. There are abundant ways to give a gift without damaging nature or indigenous peoples’ lives, none of which involve gold or diamonds. Gift-giving rooted in love and meaning means NOT giving a gift that uproots forest trees and degrades the lives of other people! I can’t imagine feeling pleasure wearing a gold or diamond trinket while knowing that extracting them causes so much misery to indigenous people in mining-ravaged forests.

Tens of thousands of rainforest trees must be uprooted, hundreds of tons of soil mined and mixed with dozens of tons of toxic environmental pollutants that contaminate indigenous land and water sources in order to extract 1 1/2 grams of gold per ton of polluted soil for that one special gold ring, item of gold jewelry, gold watch or gold accessory…

That devastation is what you’ll receive for Valentine’s Day if your gift is made of gold!

**Photo: *Cartier* – Publicity for *Cartier* shop in Paris / Gold mine destroying the forest**

Please re-evaluate your relation to status symbols and the judgments of others; re-consider your relation to consumerism, materialism, and living a life based on competing for acquiring things with no regard for the environment.

What is true contentment and compassion? Who pays the price for our excesses? Indeed, how much is enough?

Please help the Yanomami and other indigenous people devastated by the ravages of gold mining and Covid-19 propagated by gold miners!

PLEASE DO NOT BUY GOLD FOR GIFTS!

PLEASE DON’T BUY OR WEAR GOLD!

« NO BLOOD GOLD! 2 » photo montage: series “Pas de *Cartier*” – Barbara Crane Navarro with ad for *Cartier* **and re-worked photo of gold bar**

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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