PYKANY: Indigenous chief Bepdjo Mekragnotire is once again preparing to lead a group of warriors to chase wildcat gold miners away from his people’s territory in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest.
Wearing a red feather headdress, Bepdjo told AFP of rising tensions with intruders in the Bau Indigenous Territory in Para state, four years after his people expelled almost 200 prospectors.
“The miners are stubborn. They enter by any means. Because today the price of gold is very high,” Bepdjo, 45, told AFP in Pykany, a village of his Kayapo people in a territory neighboring Bau.
“We have to expel them, otherwise, they’ll just keep pushing in.”
The price of gold — a safe-haven asset in troubled times — has hit a new era of record highs amid global instability.
