To paraphrase Yanomami shaman and spokesman Davi Kopenawa: « The luxury jewelry industry is a trap for the Yanomami people. Cartier uses their ‘friendship’ to deceive and manipulate us. What they want is to extract our wealth and send it to other countries. The wealth of our Yanomami land, they will take it and send it to China, Japan, Germany and elsewhere. It’s their way of thinking. It’s their concern, earning money, earning money to get rich. »

**Mural with Yanomami girl holding “Pas de *Cartie*r” sign – photo montage: Barbara Crane Navarro/EZK StreetArt**

Organized crime controls illegal gold distribution and illegally mined gold commands an important share of the world’s gold market. In the case of Latin America experts estimate that one half of the region’s exported gold is mined illegally.
Narco-traffickers are contributing to the violence in the Amazon region. Their operations used to rely on drug trafficking. Now, they also depend on illegal gold. One of the reasons illegal gold is so valuable to criminal groups is that, unlike cocaine, there’s a legal version that looks exactly like it…

*“**Cartier**“*– **Photomontage: P.O.D.**

Cartier represents the commodity fetishism of luxury jewelry – items that are functionally useless to human society. You can click on this link: https://www.cartier.com/en-fr/ to see what luxury gold items they are selling and then you can click on Foundation Cartier at the bottom of the page to see how they are selling « Nature » and « Yanomami » to make it seem as though they care about the forest and Indigenous people while they continue to sell gold to the world.

**“Yanomami families observing gold mining destruction in their Territory” – Photo of Yanomami, Alto Orinoco, Amazonas, Venezuela and photomontage: Barbara Crane Navarro**

What do the Yanomami and other Indigenous people think of gold? Please see the Yanomami shaman’s message here:

PLEASE BOYCOTT GOLD FOR THE YANOMAMI! – Please give gifts that don’t destroy nature and the lives of indigenous peoples! – LISTEN TO THE YANOMAMI SHAMAN’S MESSAGE – THE PLEA OF THE RAINFOREST!

Nobody needs to use gold jewelry, watches or accessories to decorate themselves. There are so many less destructive and non-destructive options.

Small elements of gold are in phones and other electronic items. We should replace them as seldom as possible…

“**Yanomami girl targeted”- photo and photomontage: Barbara Crane Navarro**

« You must make every choice as though the life of your Earth Mother depended upon it, as though your own life depended upon it, as though your children’s lives depended upon it. » – John Lundin

Here are 13 Reasons Why You Should Boycott Gold For The Yanomami People by Palm Oil Detectives:

https://palmoildetectives.com/2021/12/07/here-are-13-reasons-why-you-should-boycottgold4yanomami/

And here’s information for the group exhibition « NO to GOLD – Pas de Cartier! »:

« No to GOLD! – Pas de Cartier ! » Yanomami and Trees – Gold Mining and Gold Luxury items / Exhibition 2022

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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