The 10th anniversary edition
A Guardian Best Book about Deforestation
A New Scientist Best Book of the Year
A Taipei Times Best Book of the Year
"A perfectly grounded account of what it is like to live an indigenous
life in communion with one's personal spirits. We are losing worlds upon
worlds."
--Louise Erdrich, New York Times Book Review
"The Yanomami of the Amazon, like all the indigenous peoples of the
Americas and Australia, have experienced the end of what was once their
world. Yet they have survived and somehow succeeded in making sense of a
wounded existence. They have a lot to teach us."
--Amitav Ghosh, The Guardian
"A literary treasure...a must for anyone who wants to understand more of
the diverse beauty and wonder of existence."
--New Scientist
A now classic account of the life and thought of Davi Kopenawa, shaman
and spokesman for the Yanomami, The Falling Sky paints an
unforgettable picture of an indigenous culture living in harmony with
the Amazon forest and its creatures, and its devastating encounter with
the global mining industry. In richly evocative language, Kopenawa
recounts his initiation as a shaman and first experience of outsiders:
missionaries, cattle ranchers, government officials, and gold
prospectors seeking to extract the riches of the Amazon.
A coming-of-age story entwined with a rare first-person articulation of
shamanic philosophy, this impassioned plea to respect indigenous
peoples' rights is a powerful rebuke to the accelerating depredation of
the Amazon and other natural treasures threatened by climate change and
development.
