Yanomami boy with Achiote face paint and his father’s monkey tail headband, Alto Orinoco, Amazonas, Venezuela
« The white people spread their epidemic fumes throughout the entire forest…by tearing the gold and other minerals out of the earth. They do not want to give up their digging frenzy and their thought remains closed. All that matters to them is is cooking the metal to make merchandise. Gold is nothing more than shiny dust in the mud, yet the white people can kill for that! It is not gold or merchandise that makes the plants grow or feeds and fattens the game we hunt!
All the white people’s merchandise will never be enough to exchange for the forest’s trees, fruits, animals and fish. The paper skins of their money will never be numerous enough to compensate for the value of its burned trees, its desiccated ground, and its dirty waters. Everything that grows and moves in the forest or under the waters, as well as the xapiri spirits and human beings, has a value far too important for the white people’s merchandise and money. Nothing is solid enough to restore the sick forest’s value. No merchandise can buy all the human beings devoured by the epidemic fumes. »
- Yanomami spokesman and shaman Davi Kopenawa
Gold mining site in indigenous territory – photo: Miami Herald
Gold mining and the indiscriminate use of mercury to ferret out gold are turning swaths of the world’s most biodiverse ecosystems into a nightmarish moonscape!
Worldwide, illegal gold mining is more lucrative for criminal organizations, drug cartels, guerrilla groups and mafias than drug trafficking. For criminals posing as precious metals dealers, gold is the perfect medium for laundering illicit money from other illegal activities since illegal gold looks exactly like legal gold and the proceeds from selling it can be placed in the bank…
As much as 75% of the gold extracted each year is used for jewelry, watches and other vain and futile status symbols sold by corporations in the luxury industry as well as discount retailers worldwide.
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 lands for that one special gold ring…
PLEASE DO NOT BUY OR USE GOLD!
Please give gifts that don’t destroy nature and the lives of indigenous peoples!
PLEASE BOYCOTT GOLD!
Yanomami men with bows and arrows in the forest, Alto Orinoco, Amazonas, Venezuela – photo: Barbara Crane Navarro
Please listen to the Yanomami shaman’s message:
PLEASE LISTEN TO THE YANOMAMI SHAMAN’S MESSAGE – THE PLEA OF THE RAINFOREST!
Yanomami observing gold mining site in their territory – photo of Yanomami, Alto Orinoco, Amazonas, Venezuela and photo montage – Barbara Crane Navarro
Barbara Crane Navarro 
Pingback: « GOLD is nothing more than shiny dust in the mud … Nothing is solid enough to restore the sick forest’s value … No merchandise can buy all the human beings devoured by the epidemic fumes. » — Barbara Crane Navarro – Tiny Life
Pingback: « GOLD is nothing more than shiny dust in the mud … Nothing is solid enough to restore the sick forest’s value … No merchandise can buy all the human beings devoured by the epidemic fumes. » — Barbara Crane Navarro | Ned Hamson's Second Li
Unfortunately I cannot find it, but when I was about 30 or so, there was a graphic novel about the Amazonas in two parts. I thought it was done by André Franquín from Belgium. The story started with the police/militia? kidnapping children from the streets in Rio de Janeiro to make them work in the gold digger camps, where they put mercury into the rivers to make the gold coagulate, and the children had to dive in there. It had other content, a temple in the jungle, getting the kids away from the golddiggers. But what I want to say with that is, that this problem has already been known world wide in the 1980. It is so sad that problems don’t get better, but worse instead.
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Yes, gold mining deforestation, contamination of rivers by mercury and slave labor have been issues for decades.
Now organized crime and drug cartels are laundering money from criminal activities by posing as precious metal merchants and selling illegal gold from Indigenous regions by mixing it with “legal” gold to sell it to refineries in Switzerland, the UK, Canada and elsewhere.
The proceeds can then be put in the bank!
If you know someone who subscribes to Netflix, please watch the “Dirty Gold” episode of the “Dirty Money” documentary series. The Cartier jewelry company is mentioned three times!
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I was never a fan of gold, now it is a no no for me.
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💚
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