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I am very happy to be working with many international partners. We are fighting together to save the land, the forest, our people and our river.

Davi Kopenawa Yanomami

“Amazonas – Music Theatre in Three Parts” is an unusual project in many respects. This is presumably the first coproduction with an indigenous group from the Amazon region in the history of music theatre.

The CAMPUS section of our project website complies with an explicit request from the Yanomami. While attending the Munich Biennale in May 2008 they made it clear they would gladly take part in the project – provided that the other partners “talk about the project with their children, too”, to get kids interested in the whole issue of preserving indigenous culture and the rain forest (and with that, the issue of the endangered global climate).

Davi Kopenawa, the Yanomami spokesman, does not believe his people should adopt our ways: “Our land must be respected. Our land is our inheritance, an inheritance that protects us. You say we are poor and that then we would be better off. But what do you know about our life to make such a claim? Just because we are different from you, live our lives differently, and give importance to other things, does not mean we are poor. We, the Yanomami, possess riches that were left to us by our forbears and that you white men cannot see: land that gives us life, clean water and happy children. We want you to guarantee us the right to decide for ourselves what is best for us.”


The Goethe-Institut has developed the following CAMPUS web pages for our project partners along the lines requested by the Yanomami. You’ll find a wide range of background information, exciting teaching tools and an animated film contest, all specially designed for Children | Teenagers | Teachers.