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In the Amazon,
Kayapo warrior culture,
they were only pacified
in the late sixties.
While other
indigenous groups around
they were already
pretty much vanished,
they've managed to stand up
to the outside world.
They're still
very much in touch
with their culture
and their traditions.
They are not
like other indigenous cultures.
( clapping )
When National Geographic
calls with an assignment
to go down to Brazil,
to the Amazon,
first you're very excited,
then there's
a problem with FUNAI,
with the authorization,
you don't know
if you actually can go.
Then it goes back and forth.
Then you are going
all of a sudden.
This is
all the equipment we took.
My approach
to photographing these cultures
is that I treat them the same
as if they were
a famous person in Hollywood.
I bring my lights
and my studio setup.
I want to differentiate myself
from just a pure
journalistic photographer.
I want to be
a documentary photographer
but I also want
to document their faces
and their bodies
against a plain background
so we have
quite a lot of equipment.
Then we were told
we'll be going
with a woman named
Dr. Barbara Zimmerman.
She sent us
this picture of herself.
( laughing )
And we ended up in Maraba,
which is in the Amazon.
We had to drive for six hours
to Tucumã,
the closest town in the north
of the Kayapo lands.
And on the way there,
you drive through a landscape
that looks like this.
I thought it looked beautiful.
It was very pretty.
But basically it's all
cut down rainforest.
So, Barbara kept on telling me,
"No, this is ugly, horrible.
This is what
cut down rainforests look like.
This is the enemy right here."
And this is where we went.
You see Brazil,
and you see the green area.
All that area
is indigenous territory.
It's a huge territory
that they have.
It's about a quarter
the size of France.
Or the same size
as South Korea.
It's actually the largest piece
of protected rain forest
in the world.
Protected
as long as they protect it.
As soon as you leave Tucumã,
which is right
on the border of the land,
you fly
over the rainforest and--
Our first village
was called Kendjam
and right next to Kendjam
is this beautiful rock
that just comes
out of the rainforest.
This is
an aerial view of the village.
I feel like it's out of a movie.
It couldn't be any prettier.
This setting.
The Kayapo warrior culture
where young men
at an early age would
learn how to fight and kill.
They were only pacified
in the late sixties
while other
indigenous groups around
they were already
pretty much vanished,
a lot of the neighboring tribes.
But because they had
this strong warrior culture,
they even raided
each other's villages.
There's stories where I met
one chief, Pukatire.
His village was raided
when he was about 5-6 years old,
and he was taken hostage
by other Kayapo
and grew up
with a different Kayapo family.
And his mother was killed
in front of his eyes.
They're a very fierce
warrior culture.
I think that's the main reason
they're still around today.
This is now the beginning
of our first real day.
The men were going hunting,
we asked if we could go along.
This is Ynhire, my favorite
person I met in Kayapo lands,
because he's very traditional,
very tough and hardworking.
He's constantly doing something
while we're driving the boat
down to a spot.
He's shooting at fish
with a bow and arrow.
Then we pull up at the sandbank
and he starts digging
and pulls out these little grubs
for fishing, it turns out.
They keep on
digging and digging.
Take out a lot of turtle eggs.
They took all of them out
and put one back in.
It's in their culture
to always leave one egg behind.
So with that grub, it took him
five minutes to catch this fish.
This piranha.
They're not good for eating,
so he would cut it up
and use it
as bait for other fish.
This is Okêt.
They wear
their traditional bead jewelry.
2010 I think was
the last World Cup.
So they incorporate elements
from Brazilian culture
into their jewelry.
He was excited.
He heard a wild pig.
There he shot this.
And they just use tree bark
to tie the animal up.
He doesn't have
any red paint on his legs,
but oftentimes they put
red paint on their legs
before they go into the jungle
because that way they can
find their way home easier.
The red paint stays behind
on leaves and grasses.
And while we were
maybe in the jungle,
Ynhire by himself
caught all this fish
maybe in one hour and a half.
With that one piranha
he caught earlier.
Whenever you come
out of the jungle,
everybody goes swimming.
The mahogany boat paddle
turns into a plate.
For lunch.
So he then cut up
the pig in different pieces
and then traded with Ynhire
part of the pig for some fish.
They had so much food,
so many fish and fruits
that it felt like they couldn't
even eat it all.
I've seen rotting bananas.
Fish laying around, papayas.
The food was so plentiful.
I've never seen anything
like it.
They still have bone arrows but,
ever since they encountered
the first white people,
the first thing they got
was shotguns
which are obviously
a lot easier to hunt with.
Older people are allowed
to get money
from the Brazilian government
if you're over a certain age,
which is hard to prove
because none of them have
a passport or any ID cards.
But that's a way
to get a little bit of money
and they buy
shotgun shells with it.
The hunter who shot the pig,
his wife has a pet pig at home.
So--
It was quite ironic.
When they shoot a mother
that has a baby,
and the baby doesn't die,
they take the baby home,
and raise the baby pigs as pets.
And while we were gone,
the women were sitting
right next to the men's house
hanging out, practicing a dance.
The great chief Ropni
had agreed to meet us
in Kendjam, in his village,
Metuktire.
But he said he'd come up
to meet us with Mekaron,
old friends of Barbara's.
So it turns out these women
were practicing a dance
for his arrival.
This little baby already has
his huge earlobe pierced out
right after they're born.
And that was Day one,
pretty much.
It was a long day.
This was our dinner.
I skipped the eye.
( laughing )
The women said they'd
take us out into the jungle.
They've all worn these dresses
for the last 40 years.
They have them custom made,
they have their own style
that they like.
They trade beads,
fruit and other things
to get these dresses.
This is
my other favorite subject.
You can see why.
Some of them still have
traditional wooden boats,
then they have metal boats
that they got
from the Brazilian government.
It's a mixture of cultures
coming together
in these villages.
Plastic and metal.
The women are
as hardworking as the men.
Everybody has their job.
They always take
one or two men with them
when they go into the jungle
so somebody has a shotgun
in case an animal comes,
a jaguar.
But for the most part,
it's like twenty women,
maybe one or two guys.
The boat's engine broke down
so we had to wait for them
at the river
and it doesn't take long.
And they're just settled in.
Anywhere in the jungle
they're as at home as at home.
You know, they start smoking...
or cutting their hair.
The babies always come
with their mothers
no matter where they go,
all the time.
And this young girl
climbing a tree
with a big machete in her hand.
Very good idea to send
a six, seven year old up a tree
with a machete.
What she does is
she cuts out Açaí,
which is a berry
that was very popular here.
After pomegranate,
I think before coconut water.
( laughing )
It's supposedly very high
in antioxidants
and they grow in the wild
so they harvest a lot of it.
They peel
a lot of bark off trees.
Sometimes you wonder
if that's such a good idea.
They strip many trees
for many different purposes.
It was so nice to see
that after one day
everybody was
so comfortable with us
because we made a donation
for each village we went to.
And we had two groups before
over the last four-five years.
And both times the money
went to the men.
So the men got to decide
with that money.
This time
it was the women's turn.
So the women
were extremely friendly to us.
Normally as a man,
it's hard in these cultures
to make
a connection with the women.
On that day,
we were expecting Ropni.
Together with Mekaron, he's
the most famous Kayapo chief.
After Ropni showed up,
this older lady came up to him
and they started
crying hysterically.
I was not prepared for it.
They literally started to wail
and I learned later
it's a traditional
crying ceremony,
so when you see each other
again after a couple of years
you start crying hysterically
to remember the people
that you have lost
that you both have known.
It went on
for literally five, ten minutes.
And then somebody else
comes and they cry again.
It was very moving.
It was very moving.
Then everybody's being greeted.
They line up and everybody
comes, says hello to this chief.
All the way on the right
is Mekaron,
who lives
outside of Kayapo lands.
He speaks very good Portuguese
and he was also instrumental
in getting
the Kayapo land demarcated.
It's tradition
that when the new chief comes
the whole village
gathers in the men's house,
but a lot of the men
were out of town.
They were at a soccer tournament
up the river.
The Kayapo
are actually quite vain.
They love
looking at themselves.
They videotape themselves,
they photograph themselves,
they photograph
their ceremonies.
Some of them have TVs.
They watch their own ceremonies
over and over again.
So they love
looking at pictures.
And then we set up
our studio in the schoolhouse.
And I started
taking some portraits.
I love the contrast
of the glasses
with their face paint.
And they have
two different kinds of paint.
The black one
which stains your skin
and it takes
about two weeks to come off.
And the red one
is more oil-based
and rubs off very easily.
Their sense of style is amazing.
This red paint with blue
feathers is spectacular.
And then you have
the Brazilian flag on his arm.
And he's wearing a necklace
made out of river pearls.
In the background you see
that rock on the right side
that you saw in the beginning.
We climbed that rock.
And then you get up on it,
and one of the Kayapo
pulls out his cell phone.
And you're just, "Oh, my God,
this is wild, but--"
They don't have
any cell phone service.
So where they are,
they don't talk with them.
But I guess they get them
really cheap and they use them.
They have songs on them.
They use them as cameras.
They take a lot of pictures
of themselves and other
people with their phones.
They were
pacified in the sixties.
And in the seventies
they started having contact
with the outside world.
Ropni led a couple of raids
against rubber tappers,
missionaries, farmers.
Anyone infringing on territory
he thought was Kayapo lands.
And in the process
they killed a lot of intruders
because it was such a headache
for the Brazilian government
killing all these intruders
that in the 80s with the help
of Sting, James Cameron
and other groups,
they were given
this big piece of land.
While their neighbors
have these tiny little parts,
they have this huge territory.
And there's only 7,000 Kayapo.
Our next village,
our last village,
Turedjam is
right on the edge of their land.
This bridge was built a
couple of years ago by
the Brazilian government.
They decided on settling there.
It wasn't a Kayapo village,
but the Kayapo wanted to be
closer to the outside world
and start a new village.
And because they're
Brazilians, they can
vote in local elections.
Whenever there's elections
coming up,
they make new demands, so--
One of their first demands was
that they build them a bridge.
So those 300 people
voted for this local official
and they got their bridge.
Because they have a bridge,
and they're close to Tucumã,
the village where we started,
they even have taxis
coming to this village.
A couple of years later,
a new election was coming around
and they demanded electricity.
They're hooked up to the grid.
This is their men's house.
It's even lit at night.
It was pitch-black
in the other villages.
As opposed to the outside world
the jungle there looks more
like what you'd expect
with these tall trees,
this old-growth tree.
I liked their jungle better
than in Kendjam or Metuktire
because they had
this grand feel to it.
They know how to find
some vines to get water
when they're thirsty.
So, they're still very much
in touch with their culture.
And their traditions.
As long as you can walk,
you're doing some kind of work,
there's no such thing
as retirement at a certain age.
There's always
somebody getting painted
no matter were you go,
any time of the day.
Young and old.
Kids looked
like they were suffering.
( laughing )
Some people you can only paint
when they're sleeping.
( laughing )
There was a lot more
chubby people in this village.
Their closeness to a supermarket
has its effect
and some even had a fridge.
There were some TVs.
Mind-boggling was that
Ecuadorian traders had come by
and sold them DVDs
with people
dressed like Sioux Indians
playing flutes.
( laughing )
They bought these DVDs
and they were running 24/7.
They were looking at people
dressed like Sioux Indians
playing flutes and drums.
He's still practicing
with his war club.
The traditional Kayapo weapon
is not a bow and arrow.
It's a club.
That's what Ropni used
on a lot of white guys too.
They picked up the bow and arrow
from neighboring tribes.
You see these guys
looking like this,
watching a soccer game.
And a couple of hours later
they looked like this.
Getting ready
for a naming ceremony.
We got very lucky. There was
a whole other village visiting.
Because in this new village
they wanted to show off
what a great party
they can have.
What a great ceremony.
They prepared for months
for this naming ceremony
that goes on for days.
And they invited
the neighboring village
to join them.
So there was a lot of people
getting dressed up.
That was very fortunate.
Suddenly, they would dance
and run off into the jungle.
Stay in the jungle
for half an hour.
This is a young boy
that's about to get a name.
A couple of days later.
They had to dance the
same dance for 24 hours.
They were going in a circle.
It gets darker and darker.
In the middle of the night,
they're still dancing.
Then they started
to take some breaks.
The whole village
sets up tents.
And sleeping bags.
They start camping around.
Alcohol is strictly forbidden.
All the Kayapo chiefs
put a big ban on alcohol.
So we didn't see
one drunk Kayapo, luckily.
But they love their soda.
It felt
like at a tailgating party.
( laughing )
The older people start sleeping.
And some people
totally pass out.
This little boy is getting
his name by his grandfather.
The man on the right
is his grandfather.
And then everybody goes home.
So here comes a little video
so you see a little bit
about how these people move.
( boat engine sound )
( water flowing )
( rustling )
( speaking in foreign language )
( speaking in foreign language )
( thumping )
( indistinct vocal sounds )
( indistinct vocal sounds )
( speaking in foreign language )
People still know?
( speaking in foreign language )
The people -
our people still know.
They know the war dances
and the war songs.
Oh.
( singing in foreign language )
( singing in foreign language )
( singing in foreign language )
( singing in foreign language )
( rain falling )
( crickets chirping )
Ah!
( laughing )
( indistinct )
( music plays )
( clapping )
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