Sting's South American tour took a detour -- across Brazil, up the Amazon, visiting Indian tribes who want nothing from the 20th century. For three days, Sting was one of them -- then they sent him back to "civilization" with a new look and an urgent message. Here, the whole incredible story, by Sting.
The breakfast room is full of well-heeled refugees of the Goiânia radiation tragedy, sitting out their exile in Brasília. They were all at last night's show and thank me for dedicating one of my songs to the people of Goiânia, who have become pariahs to the rest of Brazil since the X-ray leakage--no one will go there or buy any of their products because of fear of radiation. This is the twentieth century, and it frightens me.
My girlfriend Trudie and I sheepishly turn to our hopefully unpolluted breakfast while signing autographs for the staff and their children. We are waiting for Jean-Pierre Dutilleux (alias J.P.) a Belgian filmaker who has offered to take us to visit the Indians of the Xingu River. The Indians were contacted only twenty years ago, and J.P. made a film about one of them, a charismatic warrior chieftain, called Raoni. The film was nominated for an Oscar, and Raoni became a celebrity and a spokesman for the rights of the Indians.
"We can't go," J.P. smiles. J.P. smiles almost all of the time, even when there's bad news.
"Why not?"
"Because the FUNAI doesn't want us to."
"Who the hell are they?''
"The Bureau of Indian Affairs. They're afraid you'll shoot your mouth off about what's going on there.''
"What's going on there?''
J.P., still smiling rubs his finger and thumb together. "Corruption. The conglomerates and the logging companys pay the Bureau to turn a blind eye. To get to one valuable tree, they have to slash and burn a whole acre of forest. Every minute of every day, a hundred acres of the Amazon Basin are destroyed. The only protection the forest has is the Indians--soon there will be no forest."
Trudie and I both look glum.
"Don't worry. There's still a chance. I'm going to try to get Raoni on the radio. Finish your breakfast."
An hour later, the phone rings. It's J.P."We're back on. Raoni told the FUNAI to mind its own business. He wants to meet you, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs can go fuck itself."
"You mean he's heard of me?''
"He knows you played to two hundred thousand people last week in Rio. Meet me at the airport in thirty minutes."
"Wait a minute. What shall we bring?"
''A toothbrush. 'Bye!''
At the airport, we meet Mino Cinelu, my percussionist, who has wanted to visit the Amazon ever since he saw J.P's film about Raoni.
"You excited, Mino?"
"Ooski," he replies.
"Where's J.P.?"
"He's loading the ookaroo, mon capitaine." Mino has invented a language of roughly two words: all nouns are "ookaroo"; and all adjectives, expletives, negatives, and affirmatives are "ooski." He means to say that J.P. is loading supplies into the plane.
There is a lot of stuff to get into the six-seater. I lift one very heavy package into the compartment behind the plane. "What's in here...guns?"
J.P. smiles strangely. "No. We have to take them presents; fish hooks, torches, fishing lines, machetes, knives, aluminum pots. They have no metal. Anyway, they will give us stuff in return. Captain Kelly, come and meet Sting."
I turn to face an unholy vision. Captain Kelly is over six and a half feet tall in sandals, shorts. and sleeveless flak jacket. His arms, legs, and chest are covered in exotic tatoos that vanish teasingly inside his clothing--a walking willow pattern. Around his neck are Indian necklaces and bangles; a jungle knife is strapped to his snakeskin belt; his bright-red spectacles wouldn't look our of place on Elton John; and his haircut makes him look like a fugitive from Herman's Hermits-nicely topped off with a broad Mancunian accent.
Mino and I squeeze into the back of the plane among the supplies. Trudie and J.P. face us. Nice and cozy. We take off in a rainstorm and climb gingerly through darkening thunderclouds--a plaything among the elements.
"You okay, Mino?''
"Ooski, mon capitaine."
We climb into the sunshine after about an hour on the roller coaster and we all want to pee. "How much farther?" The pilots, by their gestures, indicate that it could be half an hour or three. panic sweeps the plane.
"We can land," says J.P. pointing to the east with his finger. l look out the window at a small town in the scrub. Just one street. We circle low wing tips almost touching the rooftops.
"Er, why are we buzzing this village?" I ask.
"So they know to send a taxi for us.''
The pilot finds a reasonably flat field, and we abandon the plane as if it were about to explode, spreading to the four corners of the field to answer the call of nature. No sooner are our flies zipped than the taxi arrives, an ancient wreck with a flat tire, and a front fender dragging along the ground. Its driver looks delighted--it's hard to imagine him doing much business here. He opens the back door for us, but the seat's already taken: in the center is a bug of science-fiction proportions.
"Going our way?" I ask.
Before the bug has time to answer, our driver has clubbed it over the head and thrown it out the other door.
The bumpy ride into town only makes us glad thar our bladders are empty. The town itself is a squalid collection of adobe structures and wooden huts, strung in a ramshackle line along the main thoroughfare. We pass a number of bars that look O.K., but we are clearly being driven to the driver's brother's place at the other end of town. It's not bad--all Formica and'sixties furniture. The beer is cold, and the sandwiches are fresh. It's amazing how interesting a bunch of gringos drinking beer can be to people bored out of their minds. They stare at us with a macabre and unembarrassed intensity. A couple of hunchos push to the front; they're wearing gold watches, bracelets, belts, buckles, and guns.
"What do they want, J.P.?"
"Don't worry", he says, smiling, of course, irviting them to join us. We smile at the honchos. They smile at us. The object of the game is suddenly revealed. From his pocket, one of our honchos produces a plastic bag stuffed with emeralds.
"Ooski," gasps Mino.
I have to say that the magic of precious stones is totally lost on me. Suppressing yawns, Trudie and I exit, to the bewilderment of everyone there. We set off to an afternoon stroll. Everywhere, the curious spectacle of incredible wealth and squalid poverty: this is Brazil.
When I see a young man clutching a dog-eared copy of The Dream of The Blue Turtles, pointing to my face, and saying "Eshtingue , Eshtingue"--the Brazilian pronunciation of Sting--I realize it is time to get out of town. I sign his record with as little fuss as possible, walk calmly back to the bar, interrupt the negotiations, and remind everyone that we came here to visit the Indians, and that time is getting on--we don't need to be looking for a jungle airfield in the dark.
When we reach the plane, our two pilots are in a heated discussion. J.P. asks what's up. The Portugese is thick and fast. After about five minutes J.P. tells us to get in.
"What was wrong?"
"Nothing."
"J.P., was something wrong?"
"Well, it's just that the Bureau contacted the owner of the airline and told him to stop this plane from getting to the Xingu."
"Why?"
Again, J.P. makes that gesture with his finger and thumb. "Everyone has a stake in this business. The pilots have been instructed to tell us that there's something wrong with the plane and that we have to turn back."
"So where are we going?''
"To the Xingu."
"Why?"
"Because the pilot's daughter likes you."
Now that we're out of the clouds, we can see the land below us stretching to the horizon. It's a desert of red dust.
"All of this was rain forest ten years ago," says J.P.
A few stumps are left, a sad reminder of former glories. This sickening devestation of scorched earth is the kind of damage only men can wreck. I feel angry for my children and their children.
The plane drones through the afternoon. "So why doesn't someone do something about this?''
"Look, Sting, this is the last frontier. You are visiting a place that very few white people have ever seen. No president of Brazil has ever visited this area. We can't depend on anyone else--each person who comes here has to take responsibility. Look, there's the Indian border."
The wasteland suddenly ends in an abrupt wall of gigantic forest. Two planets, juxtaposed. A dead and devastated world, cheek by jowl with a world of ebullient life.
"Where the Indians are, the forest is protected, and where they aren't, it's not. That's why the Indians are being systematically wiped out.''
There were six million lndians in the Amazon Basin. Now there a fewer than two hundred thousand. They've been massacred by guns, by smallpox-impregnated blankets dropped or their villages, by alcohol by the demoralization of their culture.
"How big is the protected area of the Xingu?"
"About the size of Belgium. It's a showpiece. The tribe we're visiting is peaceful, but it is protected by hostile tribes of which Raoni is the chief."
"How hostile?"
J.P. doesn't answer.
Through the dense forest, a highway has been carved, as straight as an arrow, traversing north/south.
"The Trans-Amazonian Highway. Traffic is not allowed to stop. Anyone who entered the forest would be killed by Indian patrols." J.P. just smiles.
Nothing can prepare you for your first glimpse of an Indian village, for the symmetry of enormous thatched long houses arranged in a perfect circle and surrounded by the chaos of the jungle. Someone is flash ing a mirror at us--a signal from another world. As we get closer, we make out the markings of a soccer pitch and goal posts. It was our first indication that this journey was about to shatter a number of fantasies we had about the Indians--as well as confirm others.
Tiny figures emerge from their houses to watch our descent to a nearby airfield. Another bumpy landing. As the door opens, the jungle heat is almost solid, and the silence of the late afternoon is wonderful and frightening.
Our hosts appear at the other end of the field. Some are on bicycles; others are wearing football stripes; some are naked except for a piece of cloth around the waist.
"Why are they running toward us, J.P.?"
"They know we have presents. Hang on to your stuff. The children have gotten into bad habits."
As they get closer, we can make out tribal face paint, incongruous with the football stripes of two teams.
"The villages play each other. They have a league," says J.P.
They stop within six feet of us and stare.
"Blond hair is strange to them."
I suppose we're staring at them, too. All the men have a kind of Henry V haircut mated with red dye. Their faces look Tibetan, which reminds me just how far their ancestors must have traveled: from the center of Asia; north across the Bering Strait to Alaska; and south through Canada, the United States, Central America; and, finally, the southern tributary of the Amazon Basin, moving about one hundred miles per generation.
The children are the first to touch us--they have beautiful faces-- and show us the way to where we'll be sleeping: a concrete floor, a rare spring bed, one filthy window. We decide we`d rather sleep outside, so we rig hammocks between some trees overlooking the river.
I had made a promise to myself that I wouldn't go near the river because in every film I ever saw about the Amazon, someone always got eaten by piranhas if they put so much as a big toe in the water. Still, it looks really inviting when you've been traveling all dry and there's no running water.
The four of us are naked and running down the riverbank. The children are amused by the whiteness of our bodies and our pubic hair. After half an hour of frolicking, I've forgotten the piranhas, and I'm digging my own stream into the river's flow. Suddenly I remember what a friend of mine told me about his trip to the Amazon: never pee in the river because the urine attracts a tiny fish that screws itself into your penis and stays there. I hurriedly stop and, with a few swift strokes, remove myself from the danger zone.
"Mino, you peeing?"
"Ooski."
"Er, I think we should get out now.''
J.P. taps me on the shoulder and, speaking with reverential quiet, says, "Raoni's here."
Above us on the riverbank is a tall man with shoulder-length hair, ceremonial beads, and Levis. Between his chin and his bottom lip is a large wooden plate. He has the good sense to be peeing into the river from a great height while waving to us with his free hand. He is an impressive figure: the chief of the Kayapo, a great and famous warrior. We scramble into our clothes for an audience.
J.P. and Raoni greet each other with great ceremony and the true affection of those who have shared many adventures. Raoni looks at us all with a friendly intensity, weighing our personalities while we stare back, trying not to let our eyes stray to the plate around which his lower lip is painfully stretched. Raoni and J.P. converse in basic Portuguese. He points to Mino's earring and asks J.P. if Mino is a woman. He tells J.P. that I am very pretty and that Trudie is braver than the two of us put together.
"Raoni likes to joke," explains J.P.
Our faces are cracking.
"He wants to take you to the village of Aritana, the chief of the Iaualapitis. It's the village we flew over, the one that signaled us. Let's go before it gets dark."
We set off on foot behind Raoni, flanked by two wariors who keep turning around to give us the death stare.
"Why are they looking at us like that, J.P.?"
"Probably because the last time they saw a white person, they kil!ed him."
Raoni reminds me of someone; I can't think who it is. He walks through the forest as if he owns it. As we approach the village, we begin to hear periodic whoops and yelps. Some kind of ceremony is taking place.
The village seems an intrinsic part of the forest. There is no clutter, no squalor or poverty, but a "rightness," a balance with nature, in such contrast to the degrading chaos of Rio and the ugliness of the mining town we had just left.
Another tribal whoop breaks the silence, and chief Aritana emerges from a doorway in headdress, face and body paint, parrot feathers attached to his arms, followed by about twenty similarly clad warriors. He can't stay and chat because he has to perform a ceremony in every house to chase evil spirits away. They head for the next, like men setting out to fix a roof. The woman and children follow. This is the keystone of Raoni 's cause--the preservation of a culture, of which Aritana's village may be one of the last unadulterated examples.
After half an hour, the sun has set and the ceremony is over. A new ritual is timetabled. Some of the woman spirit Trudie away, for no woman must see the ritual. Three large flutes are taken from the central hut, which is a kind of a village parliament, and we witness a primordial musical event, lit by the moon and of such hypnotic intensity that we all feel drugged. I glimpse Raoni moving to the rhythm of the music, and in that one gesture I realize who it is he reminds me of: the dignity, kingliness, and power that was Bob Marley, a man I met only once but would never forget. Here is his forest counterpart -- the king of the Amazon, a champion of the opppresed, the voice of a nation. I notice Mino discreetly taping the performance on his Walkman.
We walk back in th darkness to the outpost. "I made a joke today. You smiled, J.P. but you didn't laugh."
"Really?"
"Yes, I asked if one of the cases had guns in it." J. P. smiles stiffly. "Well, did it?"
"No!"
"Then why are you reacting so strangely?"
"Well, eleven years ago, when I made the film about Raoni, I gave the Indians half of the royalties. I got them a bank account in São Paulo. It was at a time when a lot of Indians had been massacred by rubber tappers, slash-and-burn land grabbers, loggers, miners."
"Raoni said he needed my help. I said, 'Anything.' He told me he'd emptied the bank account and bought a hundred rifles and ammunition. I was shocked, but Raoni said ti was the only way the Indians would survive--by defending themselves."
''He wanted me to get the guns to the Amazon for him. I said no; I could go to prison for gun running. He told me that a true friend of the Indians would. I had to agree, although I was terrified."
As much as I hate guns, I realize that I am in the center of a war where you're forced to take sides. J.P. has chosen his side, and the more I learn about these people the more inclined I am to take it, too.
I dream that I am trapped in a dark house full of suffocating net curtains that I can't get though. I land with a thud, wrestling my mosquito net, the hammock, swing above me. ''Good morning, Sting." "Er, good morning Trudie." I hear tittering in the bushes. All the Indians are heading towards the river with their toothbrushes, a strange sight reminiscent of the Flintstones. "I want to take you to visits Tacuma this moming," J.P. announces. "He's an old friend of mine, the chief of the Kamaiura. He's the most powerful witch doctor in the area, and three days ago, he was struck by lightning. His 'number one spirit' protected him from death, but he is very weak. His village is about two hour away by bicycle. Let's get some coffee and set off." I have not imaged this scenario--the four of us on bicycles, laughing and singing, acting as if the Amazon jungle were Hyde Park. "Tacuma's village is by a lagoon. The Indians believe all life started there. It's a large claim, but I suppose being isolated in the jungle can make one myths a little egocentric. Anyway, life beginning in a lagoon isn't far from what modern science tells us, and if I were looking for the Garden of Eden, I would think that I had already found it here." "So, where us the forbidden fruit my friend?" "Progress, my friend. Progress." Everyone is silent and lost in their own thoughts when suddenly, about two hundred yards in front of us, I see something startling. It is large and black and looking down the trail at us, and then it is gone, vanishing like a ghost. "Did you see it?" asks J.P., excited. "It's the panther I heard them talking about last night. They have been hunting it for weeks." There is a lot of confusion as to whether a black cat crossing your path is lucky or unlucky. My only thought is that if the cat happens to be a black panther, then we're either in for an awful lot of good luck or an awful lot of bad luck. Tacuma's village is identical to Aritana's. The same majestic long houses, the perfect circle, the village parliament in the center. His house is like a vast, dark cathedral. I am led through a series of curtains to Tacuma's chamber. A fire burns on the floor. Tacuma is in a hammock; two warriors tend the fire. It is estimated that Tacuma is in his seventies; his body is that of a young man. J.P. takes his hand and kisses it like supplicant greeting the Pope. The strangeness of the scene has something of Apocalypse Now about it, when Martin Sheen meets Marlon Brando. We have stepped back in time to the Stone Age. This fire lighting the darknesshas burned for a million years. I take a seat, staring into the flames. J.P. and Tacuma talk quietly. The two warriors are his sons. On learning this, I am overtaken by a wave of sadness: I miss my father. My father died of cancer but a week before. When I visited him in the hospital, I thought they had sent me to the wrong bed--I could no longer recognize him. I remember taking his hand just as J.P. had taken Tacuma's. I searched for something to say. I told him that we had the same hands. He agreed, but said that I'd put my hands to much better use than he had. He'd never paid me a compliment before; and now he was gone, except that onstage at the Maracana, I'd felt he was with me. In front of two hundred thousand people, he was with me--a wake to end all wakes. Tacuma looks to the flames. A roar of thunder is heard outside, and then the hiss of rain. Perhaps it's easy for witch doctors to have their words punctuated by the elements. A sense of drama or accute timing, who knows? Tacuma begins to speak with quiet intensity. J.P. translates for me: "The rain forest is being destroyed and so are the Indians. There will be great suffering, bloodshed, pestilence, anger and shame." The flames begin to rise; the thunder roars again. "The world is in great danger. When the trees die, the earth dies. We will be orphans without a home, lost in the chaos of the storm." Tacuma's house feels like it's afloat on a wild sea. The wind howls high above us in the rafters. We are in the hold of Noah's Ark, and the rain keeps falling.We are back in Aritana's village. He asks me to try a bow and arrow. He demonstrates with incredible grace and strength, drowing the bow- string back to his right shoulder. The bow looks as if it's about a snap, and then the arrow is heading skyward, describing a perfect arc, landing on the ground halfway between the parliament and the longhouses.
Now it is my turn, and the whole village is watching. I haven't shot a bow and arrow since I was a kid. What if I hit somebody? Oh, God, what if I kill a child or even a dog? The arrow lands behind Aritana's house. Honor is satisfied.
By now, all the chiefs of the surviving tribes have gathered; we sit among them. Raoni is aware of our discomfort. He calms us with a touch of his hand--we are in no danger. A dance begins: four befeathered warriors and two boys with twigs tied to their arms, accompanied by a musician beating a hollow log. They perform "the dance of the river spirit."
The performance is over, and Aritana talks very seriously to J.P. "They want you to sing. They performed for you. Now it's your turn."
"Fair enough." I look at my audience. Stiff upper lip, you've faced audiences as hostile as this. My stiff upper lip wilts in the face of a row of stiff lower lips, hands massaging spears and riffle butts. "You ready, Mino?"
"Ooski."
We seek out some old pots and pans from Aritana's house.
"What shall we do, mon capitaine?" whispers Mino from the side of his mouth.
"We'll do 'Fragile.' Keep smiling."
A deep breath. I sing in Portuguese. Trigger fingers fidget. My voice wavers on the high notes. Mino misses a beat. Don't panic. This is working. Second verse, much better. Hit those notes, they can only kill you. Go out singing.
The song is over. One of the women giggles. I make the most theatrical bow and pause expectantly with my nose three inches from the ground. Do I hear appreciative noises?
"Ooski!" whispers Mino.
"Aritana wants to paint you and Mino," says J.P.
They want to paint the snake god--their most powerful symbol--on our chests and backs. With red dye, they dab the markings of the Surucucu da jucca depico, which I am told is the most deadly snake in South America. In English it's known as a pit viper. Rarely seen, but like all deadly things here, respected.
"Forty-five minutes of excruciating agony before death. Its venom attacks the central nervous system," says Trudie cheerfully.
J.P. interupts "Roani wants to speak to you."
We are sitting in a circle. Roani speaks slowly, clearly, and with passion, despite the plate in his lip. "We want nothing from the white man. He has brought us only death, illness, and murder. He has stolen and destroyed our forest. He wants to destory it all.
"We want to be left alone to live as our ansectors did. We want our children to inherit the forest. We do not want our blood mixed with that of whites. We don't want to live in your cities. We want to stay here--it is our right. Now you must tell us what you think."
"I am honored to be your guest here, and you have treated me kindly," I answer. "I believe that the forest is yours. But the white man has no real home. He is lost in a world that he doesn't understand. He has ceased to communicate with the spirits of the earth and the forest, the river and the air. So he is alone."
"Unhappy, he searches for happiness, and when he sees happiness in others, he becomes angry and wants to destroy it because inside he is empty. I am not a politician, I am only a singer, but many people listen to me. I promise you that whenever I can speak on your behalf, I will do so. I shall tell your story to whomever I can because you are the protectors of the forest; and if the forest dies, so does the earth. Even a white man can understand this."
Raoni looks content.
"J.P., have you ever been in any real danger here?"
"Oh, yes. If you ever see the movie, you'll see a scene where one of the chiefs urges the killing of whites and suggests that they start with the film crew to show their strength. There is a closeup of me looking terrified. Raoni saved us that time by pointing out how useful the film would be to their cause." At that moment, we are interrupted by an uninvited guest; a giant green tarantula is marching straight at me.
"Move very slowly. They jump."
Mino and I are still in full war paint, but the tarantula isn't even remotely impressed. J.P. slowly reaches for one of the shells, and picks up an empty Maxwell House jar. He carefully lowers the jar over the hairy beast.
"God, he's ugly. Where's the corkscrew?"
Back in our hammocks; the red dye on our bodies is apparently repugnant to mosquitoes. No net curtains tonight. I'm in a deep sleep. A gentle breeze rocks my hammock from side to side, like a cradle. A scream wrenches, me violently awake.
"Sting there's a snake. Wake up."
"Trudie, you're dreaming."
"No, I'm not. Wake up."
I reach for the flashlight. There, in front of us is an enormous snake, its head raised and poised to strike. Our bodyguards have fallen out of their hammocks by now. They see the snake and start screaming.
"Surucucu da jucca depico!"
They run off into the jungle. We're alone with this thing.
"Did I hear right?"
"I think you did."
Mino is still in his hammock.
"Mino, are you awake?"
"Ooski."
"Get out of the hammock very slowly. No, not that side."
"Ooski."
The snake is motionless, trying to hypnotize us. I shutter when I realize that Mino and I are wearing his markings. We are still.
"We must move back very slowly," Trudie whispers. "These fuckers can jump."
Whack. The snake has been clubbed over the head with a long stick- -our warriors have returned. Again they hit it. The snake recoils in silent agony. Again and again.
"Surucucu da jucca depico!"
The snake moves again. Whack. It is dead.
J.P. and Captain Kelly have been woken by the noise. They see the snake. "My God, you are very lucky. This snake was cold. It was looking for a warm body to get next to."
The indians are pointing to our war paint. "They say he never comes to a village. The sign on your bodies attracted him. He sacraficed himself. It will give you great power."
I feel sorry for the creature.
"I think you all owe Trudie your lives," says J.P. The noise has awakened the outpost. The dead snake is greeted with awe. Everybody begins to mark themselves with the blood of the viper.
"Powerful medicine, "says Captain Kelly.
Mino and I are in the river attempting to wash off our war paint, as it is going to feel a little sticky under Western clothes in P“rto Alegre tonight. Our snake is where we left him. Held at arms length, he is over six feet long. Captain Kelly has removed one of its fangs to give to me.
We make our way to the air field where there is a plane waiting for us; soon we are in the air, high above the jungle, heading for a town called Bangy-Bangy, where we will catch another small plane to Bras¡lia.
"Well?" asks J.P.
"O.K., it was an unbelievable trip."
"Is that all? What are you going to do?"
"I'll speak to Amnesty International next week at the conference in S o Paulo."
"As long as it's not some idealistic tripe about the noble savage."
"No. They are just people with human rights. It's not the noble savage I have a sense of, but the nobility of the species. In some ways, Western man is in reverse evolution. The Xingu Indians can remind us who we really are. They must survive."
"Here's to Raoni!"
"And the Surucucu da jucca depico..."
"And the tarantula..."
"And the panther..."
"And the rain forest..."
"And the rain forest..."
"Ooski!"
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