Baer-Brown Project Itself Injured the Yanomami

Although novice filmmaker Leslie Baer-Brown recently won an award for her documentary about the Yanomami, an indigenous people of South America, her trip to their small Venezuelan settlement did not have a happy ending.

The village of Ashetoeateri lies within a biosphere reserve, a 45,000-square-mile area of rain forest meant to protect all Yanomami from outsiders. Gold miners have brought diseases that have already killed scores and that continue to spread.

The Venezuelan government last year declared the area off-limits to most outsiders, so Baer-Brown and 16 others on the expedition had to get permission from President Carlos Andres Perez, who had the travelers flown in and out by presidential helicopter, Baer-Brown said.

“Yanomami: Keepers of the Flame,” which Baer-Brown wrote and co-produced to bring attention to the Yanomami’s threatened existence, last month won top honors at the U.S. Environmental Film Festival in Colorado. But after about a week in the jungle, disaster resulted when the helicopter came to collect the expedition.

Flying too close upon descent, the aircraft whipped up winds that toppled one-third of the village’s thatched-roof and palm-frond structures, severely injuring several of some 70 Yanomami living there.

Bodies were crushed under fallen walls or roofs, and men, women and children screamed in agony or ran about frantically, Baer-Brown said. One elderly women’s leg was “split open,” she said.

According to Baer-Brown, the helicopter flew too close because an off-duty colonel wanted the crew “to get right directly over the village,” apparently so he could photograph the Yanomami people from the air.

Baer-Brown helped where she could, trying to lift village walls off those caught beneath. Her expedition was told they must leave quickly, however, because night was falling and fuel was limited.

She was so angry, however, that she grabbed cameraman Lee Raab and told him “I want this all on tape,” despite warnings from others to “ ‘keep your mouth shut or we won’t get out of here,’ ” she said.

But no tape of the incident ever surfaced, although the documentary ends with a verbal postscript describing the accident. “We don’t know what happened to the footage of the chopper,” Baer-Brown said.

Worse for her was her inability to apologize to the Yanomami, who she said had taken a special liking to her.

“There was no way to tell them I was sorry, since I don’t speak the language,” she said.