Yanomami youth turn to drones to watch their Amazon territory
When illegal miners started invading their land seven years ago, many Yanomami felt helpless. How can you surveil a territory the size of Portugal in a remote area of the northern Amazon with no police, planes or technology? Around 20,000 illegal garimpeiros, as illegal miners are known in Brazil, invaded the land searching for gold and cassiterite, causing a severe humanitarian and ecological crisis.
The Yanomami made several appeals to the Brazilian federal government. However, the nation was led by far-right President Jair Bolsonaro between 2019 and 2022, who supported mining on Indigenous lands — even though the activity is forbidden in any circumstance by the Brazilian Constitution. Bolsonaro and his team stalled all efforts to evict invaders from the Yanomami land.