
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, September 19, 1993                   TAG: 9309190005
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: C-7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: HOMOXI, BRAZIL                                LENGTH: Short

TRIBE DEFENSELESS AGAINST WORLD

For centuries Yanomami Indians kept the northwestern corner of Amazonia to themselves, driving off intruders with poisoned arrows. But the world is catching up with Amazonia's biggest Stone Age tribe.

Gold has pitted white men against the nomadic tribe of 22,000 Indians in the jungles of Brazil and Venezuela. The miners began coming in 1987 when government studies indicated the region was rich in gold, diamonds, natural gas and minerals.

The government does little to protect the Yanomami, whose fierce but primitive warrior skills cannot stand up to guns, Indian advocates say.

Government investigators have confirmed about a dozen of the whispered tales of brutal attacks by miners and reprisals by Yanomami.

More often, the killers are invisible. Malaria, influenza, measles, dysentery, gonorrhea, tuberculosis and flu kill easily because the Indians have no natural resistance to white man's diseases. An estimated 2,000 of the 9,000 Yanomami living in Brazil died between 1987 and 1992.

Noisy dredge pumps, hunting rifles and supply planes have chased off the wild boars, monkeys, tapirs, armadillos and birds the Yanomami used to hunt. Mercury, used by prospectors to separate gold dust from other particles, has seeped into rivers and contaminated fish.

by CNB