The Falling Sky: Words of a Yanomami Shaman

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

"What does it mean when someone says they can understand the inner lives of animals, trees, or even forests?...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

"The most vivid and authentic account of shamanistic philosophy I have ever read. It is also a passionate appeal for the rights of indigenous people and a scathing condemnation of the damage wrought by missionaries, gold miners, and white people's greed...Like his ancestors...Davi Kopenawa has made sure that his own powerful words will be preserved."
--Glenn Shepard, Jr., New York Review of Books

"A literary treasure...a must for anyone who wants to understand more of the diverse beauty and wonder of existence."
--New Scientist

"What better way to entice readers away from everyday forgetfulness than to invite them to hear the forest's vast and timeless symphony?"
--Laura Rival, Times Literary Supplement

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. With an intense, poetic voice he vividly describes the ensuing cultural repression, environmental devastation, and deaths from disease and violence. We follow him from his native village to Brazil's teeming cities to Europe and America, whose material greed and ecological blindness contrast sharply with Yanomami values.

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.