BETWEEN WORLDS

Disintegration is at hand: while the Yanomami still celebrate ancient marital customs and rituals, life as they know it is being threatened. In Greenland, the custom of hunting seals using dog sleds has almost been replaced by a modern lifestyle. Different conditions prevail in the Pacific Ocean. There, in affairs of cultural and traditional importance to the inhabitants – for example, the purchase of land or the arrangements of weddings – they still deal in their own currency. Many Yapese teenagers are sent to the US or Australia for an apprenticeship, but most of them later return to the island to stay forever.

The Tarahumara, indigenous people in Mexico, sell homemade snacks to the passengers of stopping trains, but otherwise renounce society and live their lives in small autonomous families. In Niger, the Woodabe also stick to their nomad lifestyle and travel from one watering place to the next, without feeling the need to change. The Suri of Ethiopia still practice their ritual ‘Donga’ stick fights, but the Ethiopian government wants them to stop. Some indigenous populations haven't yet found a way to protect their land and heritage but some have started to fight the windmills. Davi Kopenawa, charismatic leader of the Yanomami people of Brazil, nowadays lives between the worlds. The era of untouched populations living unchanged for thousands of years, far away from globalization and Western values, is coming to an end.