The University of Barcelona honours Davi Kopenawa for his defence of the rights of indigenous peoples and the Amazon

Kopenawa’s agenda at the University of Barcelona

Before the event, the Yanomami leader visited the Documentation Centre in Plant Biodiversity, where he learned first-hand about the Forgotten Plants project, which aims to promote sustainable forest management models and to develop and promote the use of forest foods. At the Faculty of Biology, he visited some of the centre’s most cutting-edge research projects, such as IndiLead, the Atlas of unburnable fossil fuels and DRY-Guadalmed.

Kopenawa began his visit in Barcelona at the CCCB, where he gave several talks and a seminar co-organized with the UB’s CINAF anthropology group, led by Gemma Orobitg, a lecturer at the University of Barcelona. Kopenawa was welcomed at the Historic Building by the Rector, Joan Guàrdia, and members of the governing team. Kopenawa signed the institution’s book of honour and received a facsimile copy of the 16^th century book De historia stirpium commentarii insignes, by Leonhart Fuchs, as a gift. “By honouring us with his visit, he joins the history of the University of Barcelona”, said Guàrdia, who urged Kopenawa to work together on common concerns and challenges for the University and the Yanomami community.

The shaman saw first-hand the treasures of the Rare Book and Manuscript CRAI Library, which contains the second-largest collection of old books in Spain after the Biblioteca Nacional. Its head, Neus Verger, showed some of the best copies of the collection held by the University of Barcelona, including Gerard Mercator’s Atlas sive cosmographicae meditationes de fabrica mundi et fabricati figura, and William Robertson’s Storia di America. He was then able to admire the views of the city from the Historic Building’s Clock Tower, restored in 2022 as part of the building’s 150^th anniversary.

César Blanché, professor at the UB’s Faculty of Pharmacy and Food Sciences, introduced Kopenawa to the botanical jewels hidden in the Ferran Soldevila gardens of the Historic Building, one of the city’s richest places in terms of species, with 250 different ones.

Finally, Kopenawa toured the most emblematic areas of the Historic Building, such as the Paranymph Hall, the Aula Magna and the Portrait Gallery, which contains the portraits of all the UB rectors since the University’s return to Barcelona from Cervera in 1842.

Visit to the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences

“I am happy to be here, to be able to look into each other’s eyes and talk as our ancestors did. My roots are in a jungle village, and with my eyes, I can also see the diseases”, said Davi Kopenawa during his visit around the UB Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences on Thursday afternoon. The leader of the Yanomami community discovered emblematic spaces and equipment of the faculty. During the visit, the academic vice-dean for Bachelor’s Degrees and International Relations, Ricard Cervera, recalled that “we are currently fighting against diseases considered classical and, above all, those that derive from civilization due to pollution, stress, toxins, etc.”. Quique Bassat, director of ISGlobal, highlighted the scientific effort being made “to seek solutions to diseases such as malaria or dengue fever, which can affect communities in very remote places”.

Kopenawa, champion of the defence of human and environmental rights

Davi Kopenawa is one of the main indigenous leaders in Brazil today. He is also a shaman, philosopher, indigenous rights activist and co-author, with anthropologist Bruce Albert, of the book A Queda do Céu (The Fall of the Sky), which is a biographical testimony, a shamanic and cosmopolitical manifesto, considered one of the key contemporary works for understanding Brazil.

Kopenawa was born in the mid-1950s in a Yanomami community in the Amazon. As a child, he saw the first whites arrive on his land; they were the people responsible for demarcating the boundaries of the Yanomami territory. Later, missionaries arrived to bring the words of God, but it was with these outsiders that also brought the first epidemics that killed many Yanomami members of Davi’s group, including his mother.

In 2004, Davi Kopenawa founded the Hutukara Yanomami Association, today’s leading organization in defence of his people and the forest in which they live. As a defender and thinker of the territory, Davi has received, over the decades, numerous awards such as the UN Global 500, still at the beginning of his struggle in 1989, as well as the Spanish title Bartolomé de las Casas, the Right Livelihood Award or Alternative Nobel Prize in Sweden, the Legion of Honour of the French Government and numerous other titles of great importance in Brazil. In 2020, Davi spoke at the opening session of the 43^rd Session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. In recognition of his work as a great thinker, in 2021 Davi was elected a member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences and received honorary doctorates from both the Federal University of Roraima (UFRR) and the University of São Paulo.