Where do you find your power and independence? The Kayapo find theirs beneath the rainforest canopy. In this installment of the Nature Needs Half Field Guide to the Kayapo Project, discover how the gifts of nature can revive the autonomy of an entire culture.
The global demand for edible nuts is expanding, driven by new research highlighting the health benefits of nuts and economic development in China and India. The Brazil nut comprises only a fraction of the international nut trade (around 2% or $50 million USD annually), but its impact for the individuals and communities who produce the nut is significant, and perhaps for the Kayapo more than others.
The extra income also strengthens community resistance to illegal mining and logging operations.
In many cases, Brazil nuts can be the deciding factor determining a Kayapo family’s well-being.
Life in villages connected to the Brazil nut trade continues in much the same way it has for centuries. Women venture out into the forest, machetes in hand, and swiftly ascend the trunks of trees, sometimes as high as 100 feet into the canopy. Sometimes, even higher. With swift strokes, they cleave the fruit from the branches, and the five pound spheres fall to the earth, landing with a soft thud in the mud below. After several hours, the women leave the treetops, shinning down bark and branch, to the forest floor. If you catch yourself thinking about the ancestors, wondering if this isn’t how they did it when they descended the heavens on ropes, you aren’t the first, and I’m sure you won’t be the last. For the Kayapo, life has more meaning when the past ties into the present. Then, they gain assurances that the present might also tie into the future.
(Kayapo woman processing nut harvest. Photo by Martin Schoeller.)
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Very interesting explanation of the importance of the harvesting of Brazil nuts by the Kapayo tribe. Brazil nuts equal wonder food and are a rich and natural source of selenium among other great nutritious benefits!