Visiting Inhotim is mandatory for several reasons. One of them is the pavilion dedicated to Claudia Andujar, "who photographed the Yanomami in the Amazon during a lifetime of activism", wrote The New York Times last weekend. The article spoke of an exhibition that will open next Friday (3rd) in New York, with 200 images by the photographer and 80 drawings and paintings by Yanomami artists conceived "to give visibility to the effort to protect their land, people and culture".

Inhotim is much closer. In one of the installations, Andujar talks on video about the moral dilemma of taking photographs of numbered Yanomami. It was the solution found in the 1970s to guarantee medical assistance to those portrayed, who did not have documents and changed their names over the course of their lives. The testimony becomes emotional when she, from a Jewish and Protestant family, born in Switzerland and raised in Romania, tells that she had escaped the Holocaust, in which people were marked with numbers to die; in the unknown Brazil that she adopted, her professional practice repeated the process, but so that the indigenous could survive. The records would be mere 3 x 4 portraits. One only has to see them on the adjacent wall of the exhibition to quickly realize how they ignore bureaucracy and transform themselves into art.

Andujar, explains the Times, is the photographer who gave up everything for a cause. Her work is a manifesto in defense of a threatened civilization. It seems to be the fate of those who get involved in the complicated task of working in the Amazon. Indigenous people, riverside dwellers, IBAMA inspectors, health professionals, social workers, religious people, and journalists. The list is long, as are the risks and fatalities. Last week, the police finally elucidated the murders of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira, a reporter, and an indigenist who, like so many others, went beyond their duties. They saw no alternative.

In a year that has barely begun and is full of news, the one who brought to light the debacle of the Yanomami situation was an activist website, Sumaúma, based in Altamira. The title of the report published on Friday (20), "We are unable to count the bodies", is heavy. The data too. "During the government of right-wing extremist Jair Bolsonaro", 570 children died of preventable causes. The images, taken by indigenous people and health professionals, are shocking.

The subject gained traction that had not been seen for a long time. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva went to Roraima the next day, shortly after changing the army commander. The media in the big cities woke up together and left for Boa Vista. Malnutrition, malaria, misuse of medicine, military inaction, mining, organized crime, and a new legal discussion, whether or not it is genocide. Folha noted the absurdity: Yanomamis, who can no longer fish in contaminated rivers, now receive canned fish in bales thrown in the middle of the Indigenous Land by FAB planes.

As reported by Sumaúma, led by, among others, journalist Eliane Brum, the Bolsonaro government reduced the medical follow-up of Yanomami children during its mandate. By the statistics, fewer individuals were sick, but only because fewer and fewer of them were being monitored. Andujar's marked ones are missing. The situation has been getting worse for some time, it seems obvious, but only from time to time it spills over into urban, rich, and white Brazil.

"It took me a while to figure out the culture of non-indigenous people, who like to look at written paper. So the only thought I had was to write it down because, if I speak, non-indigenous people don't pay attention. And if they do, they forget about it", declared Davi Kopenawa to Folha in November. The Yanomami shaman was commenting on his book, "A Queda do Céu", but the phrase works well in the current crisis. If they talk, we don't pay attention. If we pay, we soon forget.

Folha has a correspondent post in Manaus, an attentive Environment section, and important stories in its index, such as those that prove General Augusto Heleno's appreciation for mining in demarcated areas. Is it enough? Far from it. In June 2021, a reporting article from Brussels already showed that Brazil had been mentioned inside the UN as a potential case of genocide against its indigenous people.

In a country that now has a ministry dedicated to native peoples, it is important for Folha to understand their coverage as a priority. There is a lack of resources, as well as logistical and security difficulties. One path, already suggested by this column, is to intensify the association between press vehicles, join efforts, and divide the territory and specialties. The media needs to highlight the Yanomami, Munduruku, and other communities, as well as forests, rivers, and whatever else they can get from the Amazon biome.

To just keep track of the extermination is not an option.

_{Translated by Cassy Dias}