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[dramatic music]
[haunting music]
[haunting music continues]
[Mawas speaking Yanomami]
[Mawas continues speaking Yanomami]
[villagers speaking Yanomami]
[haunting music continues]
[Interpreter] It's funny,
because you're in the middle of nowhere
and you have nothing.
You can scream all you want. No one will hear you.
I remember one day we were saying,
"What now? What are we going to do?
We're trapped here in a dead end, there's nowhere to go.
What are we gonna do?"
Then Miltino got philosophical. "No, we must go down.
Let's fix this boat and go down."
I said, "Miltino, I'm not going down there.
Didn't you see what happened downstream? Go down, really?"
When you get into something like a rapid or a waterfall,
that's when you really die.
It's from here up. I'm going up, I'm not going down.
The Indians, who were of little support at that point,
they had stayed way up there.
It was no use screaming or doing anything else.
No one could really hear us. We were far below.
[haunting music]
- [Interpreter] Bill, the pilot, flew to the region
a few days after they started the trip.
I don't remember which runway it was,
but he wanted to go to the region they were going up,
but fly over the region.
He flew over trying to see if he could find them
or see them, and he didn't.
- [Interpreter] The labyrinth is so big
that when you look down on it, you look at everything.
You're looking around everywhere.
You can't focus on just one branch of the river,
so if you're not visible, there's no fire or anything,
you'll not be seen.
That's what happened. We were very frustrated.
I said, "Oh, there's a plane. Ah."
There was nothing we could do.
[haunting music continues]
- [Interpreter] We knew it was a very difficult trip
because of the rapids.
There are almost 80 kilometers of rapids. They don't stop.
We were going to start with a small engine,
the 15 horsepower, which was what we had.
[boat engine puttering]
The boat was very heavy with four passengers
and everything we needed to survive.
All the food, weapons, clothes,
bows, arrows, lots of things, chainsaws, axes,
all the things we needed for a trip like that.
[dramatic music]
You start to take stock of your own life
in terms of who you really are, your arrogance.
In our case, on that very journey,
we knew the jungle because we had lived there for 10 years.
Everything we knew that had gone down the drain
and there was nothing left.
[dramatic music continues]
We had to sleep in the middle of the jungle. We had nothing.
Now the problems begin.
[dramatic music continues]
[children chattering in Yanomami]
A lot of people live like that. You can't go up or down.
You don't have emotional and physical strength anymore.
The situation is completely out of the human perspective.
God works.
[children chattering in Yanomami]
As life is fragile as it is, like a mist,
like it is said in the Bible.
When you begin to think, you're walking,
and you're bitten by a snake.
The snake injects just a little bit of venom
in your huge body and you're gone.
You walk down the street, you're perfectly healthy.
You can fall and hit your head and die.
[villagers chattering in Yanomami]
[villagers cheering]
[Curt speaking Yanomami]
[Mawas speaking Yanomami]
[villager speaking Yanomami]
[Curt speaking in Yanomami]
[Milton speaking Yanomami]
[villagers laughing]
[Mawas speaking Yanomami]
[Milton speaking Yanomami]
[Curt speaking Yanomami]
[Mawas speaking Yanomami]
[Curt speaking Yanomami]
[Mawas speaking Yanomami]
[Curt speaking Yanomami]
[Mawas speaking Yanomami]
[Milton speaking Yanomami]
[Curt speaking Yanomami]
- [Interpreter] I don't know if it was because of the trauma
from that whole situation,
and I'm not even trying to justify it,
because it was a surprise for me too.
Instead of thinking about surviving and getting out of it,
I start thinking about things, and that gets very difficult.
I start thinking about the family, parents.
No one will ever find our bodies here.
How is a funeral without a body? [laughs]
[water hissing]
I've read my whole life. I've always loved reading.
I read everything that fell in front of me.
I read about the great Chesterton expeditions.
I read "Tom Sawyer," "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer."
When you read this book,
you will see that they are lost on an island,
and come back to watch their own funeral.
It is a very famous book by Mark Twain.
Eh, it wasn't any fun. It was no fun at all.
I kept thinking about how my father, my brother,
Marcia, Tamoto, Tiana would react at my funeral.
That was an unexpected reaction for me.
[dramatic music]
- [Interpreter] I don't know if Miltino got into a tailspin,
but he wondered a lot, he thought a lot about death.
What is going to happen now?
I said, "Okay, Miltino, so what?
We might die and if we die, we die. What can I do?
There's nothing we can do."
It was going to be a funeral without a body,
but he kept thinking about it.
"What's it going to be like?"
"I don't know, Miltino.
What do I know about a funeral without a body?
Let them worry about it."
[dramatic music continues]
- [Interpreter] Those years we spent in the jungle,
I didn't worry at all
because Miltino had full knowledge about that place.
He went out with the Indians, fished,
piloted the outboard motor very well.
He knew the forest. He was very prepared.
I wholeheartedly trusted him.
[water splashing]
Whether we needed a lighter boat,
and he told me the whole thing about it,
why they used that boat.
Everything was very natural to me.
[water splashing]
Until, if I'm not mistaken,
on Wednesday they called me into the office
to tell me that the Indians had arrived in Patamau.
That the boat had capsized, bent, sunk or whatever.
I don't remember the story the Indians told about the boat,
and that boat had disappeared in the water,
and that they thought that Curt and Miltino had died.
Then I asked, "Did you see the bodies?" He said, "No."
After a while, one of them, I don't remember which one,
came and said, "Do you understand that they might be dead?"
I said, "I understand, but nobody found the body, right?"
[vocalist singing in Yanomami]
- [Interpreter] I came here on an internship
and I liked it a lot.
On April 17th, 1980, we came here.
I was 25. Marcia was 23.
We had already been married for a year,
and we weren't worried about it
because it was something that we were prepared for
through courses, internships,
we already knew what was going to happen.
We were thrilled with the new things.
Everything was so different.
First, a language that we didn't understand at all.
The way people dressed, the environment,
the sound of the forest, the night,
everything was new for us,
like when you're in a different country.
[gentle music]
It all looked very interesting. "What is that?"
I wanted to learn whenever we heard a noise
during the conversations.
When people talked, and they talked
and we understood absolutely nothing, what they wanted.
And everything they said seemed important.
"What did he say? What is this?"
[gentle music continues]
Also, when it came to what we were going to eat,
how to clean the curassow, the wild turkey, iguana,
how to eat a paca belly, clean a pig.
Things that logically we had never done,
but we didn't have big problems because it was a path.
Like I said before, I reached my goal,
and I got to where I was able
because I had been preparing myself for so many years.
I left so much behind to be able to be where I was going.
[gentle music continues]
I came home. This is where I wanted to stay.
That was the beginning of the story all these years.
There were many years learning the language,
learning a lot about the culture.
There were good years, our children were born,
and we really missed those years we spent in the jungle.
When I arrived, one of the things that was very interesting
was that in those years,
contact with outsiders was still very limited.
In an Indigenous society, you have a kinship line
and that is very important.
When Marcia and I arrived, we were adopted by a family.
I had a mother, I had brothers. I still have brothers.
The woman said, "You will be my son."
Yunia knew was her name.
She had several children. They called me brother.
They treated me like a brother,
and they were always there for me.
There was another lady too who said,
"You are going to be my son."
I was a part of her family too.
I had two mothers, which is typical in this culture,
because they have a family system called extended family,
and there you can ask "How many mothers you have?"
[insects chirping]
[gentle music continues]
[birds calling]
[Curt imitating birds calling]
- [Interpreter] When you go into an environment like this,
which is completely different from yours,
you are the learner.
You're the one who has to learn from them
because you don't understand anything.
If they leave you in the jungle, you get lost and die.
They own the truth of the forest of everything.
They know from end-to-end how things work in nature.
It's incredible, so you have to go willing to learn,
never to teach.
[Curt speaking Yanomami]
[villager speaking Yanomami]
[Curt speaking Yanomami]
[villager speaking Yanomami]
[Curt speaking Yanomami]
[haunting music]
- [Interpreter] But a cross-cultural context like that
is very interesting.
For example, our children grew up in that context,
so the experience they have is sensational.
It's out of this world.
For them, wherever they are, they are fine,
because they know how to live
in another much simpler context in the middle of the forest
and they liked it.
Even today, when they come here to visit us, they say,
"Dad, can I go to the jungle?"
From time to time, David comes
and performs dental work in the village.
When Larissa comes, she also says,
"Dad, can I go to the jungle with you?
She already took one of my grandsons,
and soon she will take the other one too.
They have this cross-cultural experience
that is very positive,
and many people don't have that privilege.
[gentle music]
There's people from SESAI who provide healthcare.
In the past, only missionaries carried out
all the treatments, vaccines, et cetera.
Today, that's SESAI's job.
We are now focused on the educational part.
[teacher speaking in Yanomami]
We start to teach them how to read
and write in their native language.
We give them handouts, everything in the Yanomami language.
Only later we give them the transition booklet,
and they start to learn Portuguese.
This is to emphasize
the appreciation of their own language first.
They learn to read and write in their own language as well.
[villagers speaking Yanomami]
[vocalist singing in Yanomami]
- [Interpreter] The trip was unfamiliar to us,
but as we already knew the jungle,
I always say this, we knew how to make camp using leaves.
We knew how to shoot, we knew how to fish.
Eh, we knew all that. We were with the native people.
We could make fire. We had taken easy-to-prepare food.
We had honey, we had a lot of things
for if it was a week trip or a 10-day trip,
we wouldn't have a problem.
Our logistics were good.
It was supported by two Indigenous people
who also knew everything,
and we had several years of experience in the jungle.
We knew all the dangers and all that stuff.
[water hissing]
In the adventure aspect,
there was also an aspect of ignorance.
Courage is very relative in a case like this. [laughs]
[water splashing]
One of the things we did not foresee
is we had a lot of experience with wooden boats,
and the wooden boats which we used before are much heavier,
but they are also much more stable.
The aluminum boat is fast, but it is not as stable.
It's very edgy.
[haunting music]
[water hissing]
- [Interpreter] So we decided, I don't know how,
but let's get an aluminum boat.
At that time, 30, almost 40 years ago,
it was very difficult.
It was very difficult because here in Boa Vista,
there were no aluminum boats to buy.
Today you can find any type, size and color,
and we, we managed to get a boat from Mojine Marine.
It came chartered, arrived in Boa Vista,
but it wasn't the proper boat either.
It had to be that boat they called [speaks Portuguese]
because it stays higher on the surface of the water.
[water hissing]
The one we got was a cargo boat.
It carried more,
but settled more on the water and was slower.
That's the one we bought,
and we bought the wrong one that was riveted.
It wasn't even welded.
Because the ones that are used today are welded,
and stronger, which is much better.
The rivet one is much weaker.
[water hissing]
Then when this boat arrived here in Boa Vista,
we had no choice but to say,
"Now we have to take it to the village.
How are we gonna take it, by airplane? It's not gonna work.
We could perhaps get into the Air Force's Buffalo
and take it all the way up to Awarise,
but Awarise goes far beyond the post from where we live.
Then we would have to bring the boat back
with a lot of waterfalls and everything.
We decided, "Ah, let's go up the river."
We set everything up, all the necessary material, fuel,
tools, food, and we take two Indigenous people with us.
We prepared everything for our trip, which would be a feat.
Right on the first day, or didn't even take a day,
we started to sense what we were going to face.
[water hissing]
On the first, right on the first day,
or it didn't even take a day,
we started to sense what we were going to face.
Because it was a river with a lot of rapids,
there were times when we had to stop.
[gentle music]
Two or three people had to go down on top of a rock,
and then we had to go through the other side
because the engine didn't have enough power to pass.
I'm talking about rapids here.
Imagine when the rapids or the waterfalls are huge. No way.
We already started to see
this trip is going to be challenging.
We kept going, after all, we were young at the time
with an adventurous spirit,
and so we were saying, "Let's go."
[gentle music continues]
It is not a straight river or one that has curves,
but it gets wide, so it is a very different
and very bumpy river.
We knew we were going to face some challenges ahead.
[gentle music continues]
- [Interpreter] There was no other way.
We had to choose the smaller branches of the river,
and we had no idea where we were.
We didn't know because we always opted for smaller branches
with fewer rapids or weaker rapids
so we could keep going up the river.
We did not know where we were,
whether we were too far to the left,
to the right of the main branch, if there was a main branch,
because that was the option.
We were going up.
And we kept going up without knowing where we were,
but as we went up, we realized
that we had passed the point of no return.
There was no way to go back.
[gentle music continues]
As we went up and passed waterfalls, some of them were big.
We had to take the boat out.
We knew we couldn't go down any further,
because when you're going up the river,
you can still control the engine.
You can stop, you can look where you're going,
you can go back, you can even go in reverse.
We knew that the only way now was to go forward,
and we were getting more scared
because the rapids didn't end.
We would pass one, and soon after there was another,
and another and another and another.
And sometimes taking the boat out,
passing through the woods, and we were scared,
because we couldn't give up on the trip.
We had to keep going.
[water hissing]
[gentle music continues]
[teacher speaking in Yanomami]
- [Interpreter] I remember that when we arrived,
we initially worked hard to learn
the language and the culture,
so we decided not to have children for practically two years
so we could adapt ourselves to the place
and learn the language in the best possible way.
We were very careful to do things as best as possible.
There are people who learn the language faster than others,
but it's a very complex language,
and it has many onomatopoeic sounds,
and sometimes the sound they make is even funny.
They come and take the arrow and then [vocalizes]
so cachow means that the arrow really penetrated.
It has all these sounds.
I always say I'm going to die learning this language
because there's a lot to learn.
It's no use to look it up in the dictionary.
You have to create your own dictionary.
It is complicated. It's no use even going to Google.
I type there, what is this?
Google won't tell you anything
because it's a language that hasn't been described
ipsis litteris yet.
[children speaking Yanomami]
[Curt speaking Yanomami]
[child speaking Yanomami]
[Curt speaking Yanomami]
[child speaking Yanomami]
[Curt speaking Yanomami]
[child speaking Yanomami]
[Curt speaking Yanomami]
Hello?
- [child speaking Yanomami] - Hello?
[Curt speaking Yanomami]
[child speaking Yanomami]
[Curt speaking Yanomami]
- Mm-hmm.
[Curt speaking Yanomami]
- Mm-hmm.
[Curt speaking Yanomami]
- Mm-hmm.
[Curt speaking Yanomami]
- Mm-hmm.
Oh. [Curt speaking Yanomami]
[child speaking Yanomami]
[Curt speaking Yanomami]
[all laughing]
[Curt speaking Yanomami]
[Interpreter] It's beautiful.
They say, "Wow, Curt, you speak Yanomami so well."
It's not that I speak well,
but the more you imitate, the closer you get to them.
Even if you can't really speak the language,
I try to imitate by making little jokes.
[speaks Yanomami]
They say, "Wow, this guy is one of ours."
That's not true. I still have a lot to learn.
[villagers speaking Yanomami]
[Curt speaking Yanomami]
- [Interpreter] Curt is so generous.
Sometimes I tell him that he doesn't suit himself.
I say, "But you don't suit yourself"
because Curt is a very,
let me see how I can define Curt.
Curt is a very god-fearing man that doesn't have,
I mean he's a very,
he's a very intimate relationship with God.
He prays a lot and I have to learn more of that from him.
I am very much like I pray when I'm walking,
when I'm driving, when I'm at work, I pray a lot like that,
but he stops, prays until early morning.
So before he goes to sleep
he puts his two pillows on the floor and kneels.
He is this man of prayer,
this something that is a rule in his life, understand.
I think that's what sustains him.
So when I tell people that he doesn't suit himself,
because he's very grumpy, but he doesn't mean it.
He complains about everything, and I say, stop ba.
He's a curmudgeon.
He was born a curmudgeon, but he's very funny.
He's very happy.
That's why he doesn't suit himself,
because he has this grumpy side, and I think that,
I don't know why he just likes to be against everything,
but he's very happy, he is incredible,
and his love for the Indigenous people too.
He is very happy. He is very happy with his ministry.
He is very happy with his family. He is a very happy guy.
I think that he is a little too happy and silly sometimes,
I'm much more serious.
Curt ends up being very funny, and it's too much for me,
because I'm much more serious, but we get along very well.
There's a balance.
Hey.
[child speaking Yanomami]
[Curt speaking Yanomami]
[vocalist singing in Yanomami]
[Curt speaking Yanomami]
[child speaking Yanomami]
- [Interpreter] They have more knowledge than we do,
and we only have more knowledge in areas like technology
and medicine which they don't have access to,
and if you were on your own
you would die in a place like that.
How did they survive all these years living the way they do?
[water hissing]
[gentle music]
There is a similarity.
Of course we overvalue technological knowledge,
but if you stop to think about it, we can't even make a map.
Your personal knowledge is based on the technology
that came through college, companies, secrets,
but if you go back to the basics,
you don't know how to make fire, they do.
You;re living in a society that has provided these things
through centuries of trial and error.
But if that all ended and you came back,
how would you make fire?
[gentle music]
I had colleagues in the village who allowed me to study
at least for a while, and I enjoyed it a lot,
and I went out a lot, and I liked to do that.
I did it with pleasure, and it was like this.
Almost every Saturday, I went out.
And by the time I went out I regretted it bitterly,
because they go walking through the woods all day.
Literally the whole day.
I was in excellent physical shape,
but when you start walking, you warm up.
You walk and walk and walk and you don't see anything.
People think that going into the woods,
it's like going to a supermarket.
You pick something here, something else there,
grab a banana, kill an animal,
and go back home with the cart ready.
Many times you don't see anything.
The people get hungry for meat.
They call it [speaks Yanomami],
which means to get hungry for meat.
They didn't find game.
I went out, sometimes when I went out
they had found something.
Someone had heard the noise of pigs or seen the footprints.
We would go with more certainty,
but I remember leaving early, by 6 am I would be walking.
I would walk the whole day,
and come home at the end of the day.
That part was interesting,
because when we stopped we would talk,
and then I would learn the language.
That part helped me a lot too in my relationship
and the vocabulary for that kind of walks, hunting.
To this day, we all know if I find a feather on the ground,
I know from which bird it was.
I can get one or another wrong,
but I know a feather of a toucan, a macaw,
a curassow, a jacu.
You learn these things.
What animal is singing, what bird you're seeing.
Something very cool about learning their language
is when you call an [speaks Yanomami] or locate the pigs,
they listen to the noise the pig does.
They heard it from far away, so they took it.
Stopped, and they always took two types of arrows.
An arrowhead for a large animal, which is like a knife,
so you can have an idea,
and an arrow for birds, which is quite different.
They would leave the arrows for birds,
and only take two or three tipped arrows,
which is called roka.
Think of a knife, only it was made of very strong bamboo,
and then we could go on top of the pigs.
Then it got crazy. There was a rush.
They would kill several of them.
It was far away. They would disappear.
I would always stick with one of them
and go after them with a shotgun,
and usually kill one or two or even more.
Then we stopped,
and they went back to where the arrows were,
where they had left things.
I used to go crazy about it because it's all the same.
You have no idea
how they have such a sense of direction.
It still amazes me to this day.
[villagers speaking Yanomami]
These things seem so strange.
You'll see that behind all that there's a common feeling,
and that's very interesting.
Look at it, any other culture today,
no matter how non-Western or how different it may be,
mm, you will see the same human characteristics
that we all have.
Love for children, scolding them.
When you look at it, there is no difference,
no difference at all.
When you understand, you live together, and you admire,
you really appreciate what is common to all of us.
The joys, the pains, the abundance of food,
a good hunt with a lot of pork,
a lot of joy that this brings.
The same thing if you go to a Rodesio steakhouse,
it's just the same thing.
You understand this part,
and we already knew this from the beginning,
but when you really process it,
for example, I sometimes go to Cassia,
a hospital unit there, and what does a guy feel?
He misses home. He wants to go back, same thing.
I remember I was talking to my brother-in-law Akobe,
and I was already speaking the language well,
and I was looking for word longing.
We think that longing is something exclusive
to the Portuguese language,
or the Latin languages, especially Portuguese.
It surely doesn't exist in English.
You will say I miss you or something else,
but the feeling is the same.
It's not that we feel more because our word is better.
I was talking to Akobe,
I said I was looking for the word longing.
"Let's see if they have it," I said.
Sometimes you think of when you were little,
what your father was like.
I was saying a lot of things, trying to find that word.
He listened and turned to me and said the following,
"Funny white people feel that too."
I couldn't find the word,
but he said the same thing I was looking for.
He was astonished. And you also think like that.
We use the word saudade,
and saudade really is a spectacular word in our language.
Joy, sadness, feelings,
and many things common to all peoples.
[gentle music]
This is difficult to teach,
or for a surrounding society to understand,
because there's always this idea.
No, he is an Indian. He doesn't understand or know anything.
He doesn't have anything. He's worthless.
That is a very bad understanding.
There are still many here in Boa Vista who think like that.
They say, "They're just occupying land,"
and then there's the political line
that I won't even talk about.
There's gold digger invasions.
It's a horror what has been happening today.
[gentle dramatic music]
We continued for two more days without major incidents,
but we were scared because the rapids didn't end.
We were going up, I reckon maybe 62 miles of just river.
What was the problem?
You passed a rapid, sailed maybe five, 10 minutes.
Then you saw water in front of you,
and it was a big discouragement.
You'd get there, see if you could pass.
If not, we'd unload the boat, pass everything by the side,
taking the boat out and continuing.
[gentle dramatic music continues]
- [Interpreter] As we climbed operating that vine,
the boat docked and started to return.
[gentle dramatic music continues]
It came back and got a good hold of that thick vine,
and it turned over with the force of the water.
And it turned over, and everything that was in the boat
went down, including us.
And Milton just said to the Indians,
"Take the machete and jump."
One of them grabbed the machete
and they jumped onto the bank.
I saw Miltino down river going down among the other things
that were floating,
other things had already gone to the bottom of the river,
the boat capsized, and then began to descend.
I also threw myself into the water and went down.
In the middle of things, we went deep down,
the Indians then stayed on top
and went straight to the bank.
[water splashing]
[gentle dramatic music continues]
- [Interpreter] When the boat capsized, I entered the water
and I was pulled right into the current,
and got out into a whirlpool.
The only thing I had time to grab,
which is what was within reach, were two oars.
I sank with these oars
because I got into a whirlpool of water.
It pulled me down with the two oars,
and they were cedar oars.
They float, they give you a certain buoyancy.
I sank and I went very deep. Everything went dark.
I just remember the darkness, my ear hurting.
I don't know how deep I was, and I was going down.
I can swim. I was in good physical shape.
Despite being tired, but there was nothing I could do.
Then begins the first direct intervention of God
because I said a prayer.
In fact, it was a cry. God saved me.
Immediately I went up
as if the whirlpool started to do the opposite.
Instead of pulling me to the surface of the water,
I was floating.
I saw Curt way down on top of the boat,
and I swam toward Curt, but everything has sunk.
We could see the boxes floating away.
We had wooden boxes with food, with matches, with a stove,
with everything we needed, and it was sinking.
[water hissing]
It's not scary drowning,
it's a very bad feeling, which is what was happening to me.
When I said this prayer, in fact, it was a cry,
a cry for help and I went up.
The time I went up, the feeling was not just of relief,
it was having gone through a trauma there.
The time that I sank,
[water hissing]
it was more of a physical reaction
than an emotional one of fear.
Now we are really lost.
Now our situation is going to be very serious,
but you just keep doing something.
We put the boat on the bank and sat down for a while,
looked at the whole situation, and it was very serious
because of our two traveling companions stayed far up river,
and we put the boat there, and we went up
to try and find them, but we couldn't,
because there were so many branches and so many islands
that we could not move on to the next island,
and they couldn't get down either.
And we stayed far away thinking about that mile,
and that's conservative.
They tried to find us and we tried to find them.
[gentle dramatic music continues]
- [Interpreter] The boat was really crumpled.
It looked like a U,
you couldn't even see it was a boat anymore.
When we turned around, the engine was still attached,
and it still had the gas tank.
The tank was still attached to the hose,
so it was all providential
so that we wouldn't be left with nothing.
There was no alternative but to stay there,
there was nowhere to go and we were very tired,
exhausted from that rapid we went through.
We had no choice. We had to stay there.
There was nowhere to go.
[dramatic music]
We had to fix the few things we had.
Opened the bag I had, opened everything.
Some things were wet.
Then I did a silly thing
and put these clothes on top of a rock,
on the edge of the river to dry,
but during the night the river rose so much
that in the next day there weren't any clothes left,
everything was gone.
The little things I had were gone.
Everything starts to come into your mind.
What now? What's going to happen?
[dramatic music continues]
Those thoughts are always, ah, there.
Our family members, what will they think?
How long are we going to be here?
Will we ever get out of here?
What is God trying to teach us with this?
[dramatic music continues]
Miltino thought about death.
He was very worried about how his funeral would be
with no body.
I said, "Miltino, forget about it.
There's a chance we might die."
It's a possibility, but I kept thinking,
what is God's purpose in taking our lives in that context?
[water hissing]
[dramatic music]
What now? No food, no material for survival.
Machete, if we had a machete
we could cut hearts of palm to eat.
We looked for something to eat,
but the jungle was just really scarce.
It wasn't fruit season either. There was nothing.
We looked for some root.
There was nothing, so we could only drink water.
Whenever we got hungry, we filled our bellies with water,
but it didn't kill our hunger, it just alleviated hunger.
We spent three days in this routine.
We started to get really weak,
and I heard a noise in the woods.
Chop, chop, chop. When I looked, I saw an alligator.
It was this big.
I said to Miltino, "Miltino, an alligator.
Let's catch this alligator and eat it."
And then he said, "Okay."
I said, "I'll take the front and you take the back.
You grab a stick, and I'll take the front."
I said, "I'll take the front and you take the back,
and you grab a stick and I'll take the front,
and we'll mess with it to distract it."
No sooner said than done, bap, hit him hard.
Sure enough, that's what happened.
I took the front, very slowly feeling my way,
and he took the back.
The alligator stayed by my side looking at me.
Then it raised its little head like this and did [hisses].
When he did this [hisses],
Miltino came from behind and hit it.
Bop, we killed it with a stick. Then came the problem.
There was no fire, no knife.
How do you open a hard skin like that?
I just remember that we grabbed its tail
because the tail is all full of stuff.
We break off that little piece.
Then we would have a few pieces of meat.
We took it and ate it. We couldn't kill the hunger.
We ended up not being able to use the alligator
to satisfy our hunger.
[water hissing]
We knew that death was one of the possibilities,
because what were you gonna do in the middle of the jungle
with nothing, without fire, without a machete,
without being able to do anything to survive.
We had nothing. It really was a chaotic situation.
[dramatic music]
And we were facing death,
because we said, humanly speaking,
there is no way out of here.
How are we going to get out of here now, broken boat,
I don't know if it will be, if it will work again, no food.
It's a matter of time, I think, for us to die.
[dramatic music continues]
Our salvation is still that we have the boat,
the broken boat.
The engine is still there.
There is some fuel left in the tank,
and the best thing to do is to dig into it
and try to find a way to get it working again,
but then comes Miltino and says, "it's no use.
There are no tools."
I've never seen Miltino like that,
so close in these difficult times,
because Miltino was a very relaxed guy, nice to talk to,
but when the difficulties came, he just got depressed.
[boat engine humming]
[dramatic music]
- [Interpreter] You start making an assessment
of your own life in relation to who you really are,
your arrogance in Aike, on that very trip
of 10 years of experience living in the jungle,
everything that had gone down the drain,
and there was nothing left.
[dramatic music continues]
You start thinking about many of your own mistakes too.
It's hard to explain it, but it's a suffering situation
and you make new resolutions.
[dramatic music continues]
That came from this experience of human fragility
in relation to life, emotions, feelings.
I've always been a person who has a high pain threshold.
I always thought about how I would react
in a situation like that.
I learned a lot from that experience,
and it has been with me since that time.
I may be in a situation right now of great acknowledgement,
you know, some things like that have happened occasionally,
but I say remember, remember who you really are
that was in those days of suffering.
A kind of depression. You won't get out of here.
It is even in Curt's way.
[water hissing]
[dramatic music]
[Interpreter] The jungle,
especially the Amazon jungle, for me is impressive.
It is exuberant. It is fascinating.
It opens your eyes
because it is such an immense thing, so diverse.
There are trees of all types, size and color
with those vines and whatever.
You say, "Wow, what a beautiful thing."
It has a big impact, but apart from being
such a beautiful, exuberant, and fantastic place,
it's a place that scares you.
It gives you a certain fear, a dread,
because this very jungle can also swallow you up,
and it's not just the large animals like jaguars
and other animals, but let's say mosquitoes,
ants, termites, snakes,
these smaller insects, they can crush you.
It can make you fall into such a depression
and you can even die because of small insects,
and if you don't know how to get out of that context,
the jungle will, you know, swallow you alive.
[gentle music]
For the Indigenous people, it's easy.
The jungle is their home.
If you are with an Indigenous person,
you are at home with him.
He takes a leaf, then he weaves it,
and makes something to carry things.
He goes there, takes the vine,
does something for this or that,
rips off some bark from the trees and makes a net.
For him, it's the backyard of his house,
but if you leave the trail for a little bit, you get lost.
You look everywhere, everything is the same.
Everything is green.
You only see the woods, the trees,
and you get lost without realizing,
and there's nowhere to run.
[dramatic music]
I sat down with Miltino, we talked and I said,
"Miltino, do I think there's a chance we might die?"
"Yes, it's one of those possibilities,
but I believe that God has a purpose for our lives,
and one of the purposes is for him to work in our lives.
Let's stop here.
Let's sit down and talk
and let's clear everything up with God.
There are many things here that we do determinedly,
and God is completely out of the picture."
That's it.
We're living on the sidelines with no purpose.
We're doing things in the name of the gospel of Jesus.
But Jesus is out of our routine here of our day-to-day.
It is God trying to teach us how to rely on him.
We were doing things just for the sake of it
with God out of the way thinking we were the ones.
Let's confess our sins.
[dramatic music continues]
With regard to our colleagues at the Post
and everything that we did, the steps we took too.
Let's ask for forgiveness. What else can we do?
We were like, let me see,
if I can remember anything else
that I have to get right with God
because I acknowledge that I am living a life
relying more on myself than on God, and there it was.
We confessed our sins. We looked at each other's faces.
We seemed to see a little halo, and we felt so holy.
Lord, if you want to take me now, I'm at peace,
and you know, there it was, we confessed our sins,
and we looked at each other's faces.
We seemed to see a little halo and we felt so holy,
Lord, if you want to take me now, I'm at peace.
I've already confessed everything.
I've already acknowledged that I'm no good,
that I do everything putting you aside,
so if I have a chance to get out of here,
I'll start to straighten up more
and put you in charge of my life.
You have to take the lead and I will just follow.
[dramatic music]
[children chattering in Yanomami]
- [Interpreter] Our strengths, what we are are nothing.
When you face some situations, mm, you see strengths,
weaknesses, and you realize
what I always insist on, humanity.
[children screaming]
Prayer is a two-way street.
You speak, you ask, and you talk, and God listens.
And God answers as he sees fit.
If you only look at your side and you forget about grace
and that God is listening to you, that he is your father,
you get into this problem
because it doesn't only depend on your faith.
That was what was happening.
Deep down I was like, I don't deserve to be saved.
I know so much. I practice so little.
I felt insufficient, incapable,
and that I deserved to be in that situation of,
when you pray, you say, oh my goodness,
I can't even ask you to do something like that
because that's what I mean.
You look at yourself and you forget to look at God.
It's like a son that goes to his father
and says, "Dad, I know you're not going to do this
because I did this, I did that, I did the other thing.
I disobeyed, but can you buy me a?"
Then he asks for what he wants.
That was the feeling, but we prayed anyway.
When we were pulling the engine cord,
the prayer was specific, "God, let this engine start."
We would even say the model of the engine.
It was a prayer that we showed our total reliance on God
like all prayers,
and we believed there's going to be an answer,
something spiritual.
No, God will do it. God will look after me like he promised.
That part was out.
This part is very important
because we pray based on the promises.
"Whenever you ask in my name, knock,
and it will be open to you.
Seek and you will find
whatever you ask in my name according to my will."
That was the imbalance in that situation.
You look at yourself and if you say,
"God will listen to me because I am,"
and then you complete it with adjectives,
you won't find many.
I am such an excellent person. I am selfless, I pray a lot.
I evangelize. I do this, I do that.
You won't find anything that meets the standards.
It's even silly to say this. I pray a lot, I evangelize.
I do this, I do that,
but the Bible says, "Pray without ceasing."
How much do we pray?
If it says pray without ceasing, I'm out of line.
[water hissing]
[dramatic music]
- [Interpreter] For me, it was like this.
Our salvation was in the boat and the outboard motor.
Even though it was all filled with water and et cetera.
There weren't any tools left
so we couldn't open the engine, like we couldn't.
We couldn't even pull the engine rope
because there was water inside, in the carburetor,
the internal part, the spark plugs.
Everything was filled with water.
When we tried to pull the rope, it didn't move.
It was stuck.
When I left the outboard all night with it upside down
trying to get the water out,
the next day when I pulled the rope,
I realized the rope was free.
I pulled it.
The rope came out, so just water coming out everywhere.
When I pulled it, the thing would go
[imitates engine starting].
I told Miltino, "The rope is free."
He kept saying, "Yeah, but it's no use.
It's full of water in there."
"Stay on the hammock and I'll work there.
I'll see what I can do with the engine."
"Nah, there's no point." I would go back there.
Then I would come up with ideas.
I took that part of the outboard motor
that regulates the height and went to Miltino.
I said, "Miltino, look here.
This here could be a key that we can use
to remove the spark plugs.
Let's try to bend it. I don't know how.
Let's see here, let's take the spark plug,
open it and that's it."
We've got the engine almost dry
releasing the water that's inside the spark plugs.
He would pick it up. "Hmm. This is not gonna work."
That made me angry.
I'm not gonna ask the guy for his opinion anymore
because he's unbelievable.
[water hissing]
I put the engine back in, then I started pulling.
Vroom, vroom, vroom, nothing happened.
I said, "Miltino, you could you pull it?"
He said, "It's no use.
There's water inside the spark plugs."
I said, "Okay, but let's pull it here."
He said, "Eh, it won't work."
I said, "Miltino, stay on the hammock, pray,
and I'll work here, okay, okay."
And so we did.
He prayed while I was working, and I kept pulling.
[imitates engine sputtering]
And I pumped gasoline to fill it in.
Then suddenly when I pulled it out, it did this boom.
When Miltino saw what happened,
he jumped from the hammock very happy.
"Man, did you see that?"
I said, "Of course I saw it. It worked, right?
Now you'll come, right?" We were so exhausted.
[imitates engine starting]
Now it worked. Okay, done.
[water hissing]
- [Interpreter] All of a sudden the engine goes, hmm,
and it dies again, but it was a miracle.
It was great to see the engine starting up again.
Then we were in a new phase,
with the possibility of the engine working again.
[upbeat music]
[upbeat music continues]
[dramatic music]
- [Interpreter] The Araguaia River
is a relatively large river,
so it wouldn't be very difficult to find a boat
on most of the Araguaia river,
but they had the accident in a region
where it splits into many, many branches,
hundreds of branches,
and there's this huge amount of islands and branches,
so that would make it extremely difficult to find a person.
The region they stayed after the accident
where they had the boat and the engine and where they camped
until they managed to get the engine working
was a place where they would hardly be seen
by someone on a plane.
At that time of year in July, the river's really full,
so there isn't a dry place to stay by the river.
It's very difficult to find a place where you can stay dry
and where you can be seen by a plane.
The only dry place is in the woods,
and it's difficult to see someone there.
- [Interpreter] Pulling the boat,
we would go through the mangroves on top of trees,
trunks, and everything.
At one point, Miltino stepped on an alligator.
He was even almost bitten by the alligator.
When we were close to the larger part of the river
at the top, we heard the plane.
Then we stopped and they stopped.
They are looking for us.
On Sunday when they went there on the way back,
the plane was very low, deviating from the normal route,
knowing that possibly something had happened
because we were taking too long.
We should have already been at the post.
[airplane engine rattling]
The plane passed right over us.
We saw it very close to us.
"We are here, we're here." We screamed "Ah."
Ah, the plane left. Okay, off it went.
We felt helpless. There was nothing we could do.
You see the plane? Ah, look, here's the boat.
It passed right over us.
We continued the journey. We pulled the boat out.
The stern was badly bent.
Then we used some stones to put it into place,
and then we sort of moved it and then bashed it into place.
We put it back the way it was.
We set up, and we spent the night there.
The next day, we left early in the morning.
And at night, thank you very much, Lord.
Tomorrow morning we'll return to our journey.
We left the next day, very early in the morning,
put the few things we had in the boat.
[imitates engine revving]
Let's go, let's go. Hey, what in the world?
Yesterday we worked very hard to get the engine really hot
and now nothing is happening.
We forgot to pray. Lord, make that engine work please.
Yesterday it worked. Why won't it work now?
[imitates engine starting]
Oh, there it is. All right, now it's turning on.
Yeah, that's working.
That's how it is in our lives, right?
We get it right, but it seems like we just don't learn.
[boaters shouting in Yanomami]
[dramatic music]
- [Interpreter] We dismantled the camp.
Hmm, before taking the tarp off,
we knelt down and we made a resolution
that whenever and wherever we told the story,
we weren't going to go out as heroes.
We knelt there and prayed.
In the morning, we dismantled the camp
and started sailing again,
and we got to the crash site and we couldn't get through.
There was no way. What do we do?
We had to take the boat out.
It took us all day to walk about 300 meters
because now we had to carry the boat,
and it weighs 154 pounds.
It has the engine, and we were weak.
The boat is 19 feet long.
You start walking and it gets stuck in the trees.
You go there, turn around a little bit, come back here,
because we needed to get to the other side
of the branch of the river.
There we could go sailing,
and it was again, a very risky situation.
[water hissing]
[dramatic music continues]
- [Interpreter] We had to spend the night there again,
it was a clean place, some big rocks.
There was a cave inside the rocks.
I said, "Wow," I didn't even need to ask him.
He immediately said, "Yeah, a jaguar's home, right?"
I said, "Yeah, it looks like a jaguar's home.
Wow, we managed to get out there,
and now a jaguar will eat us, eh, it's no use, right?"
God is in control. He is the one who takes care of us.
So there's some things that,
I believe it really was a jaguar's home,
but I think the jaguar went for a walk that day,
so it was out.
- [Interpreter] Things like that are spectacular.
That day when when we were pulling the boat,
I stepped on the alligator, a snake passed by,
a [speaks Yanomami] passed by our side,
and when we arrived at that place,
that's where the famous cave was.
There was a place, it was a stone cave,
and there were only jaguar footprints.
It was indeed a jaguar's home. What do you do?
We have to sleep here. There's nowhere to go.
I took my stick. Can you imagine?
Curt took out the flashlight,
which is a wisp of light, but it does the trick.
We had to see if the jaguar was inside.
How am I going to hit the jaguar on the head with a stick?
Will it hurt?
Will I be able to kill the animal before it kills us?
There was no jaguar, but there were many footprints.
One after another, one after another.
[dramatic music]
There was a terrible rain during the night,
and we made the camp and we spent the night there.
Again, I kept thinking,
"Oh my goodness, if this engine doesn't work right,
we'll only have one chance.
If it stops working,
we'll go in with the boat in this condition."
It was a huge boulder with violent water.
You can't imagine what will happen here.
We only had one chance.
That night I was praying and thinking,
"Lord, don't let the engine stop working."
The next morning we started the engine
and we prayed out loud, "Lord, you have brought us this far.
The engine cannot stop."
There is no time to start the engine again,
because the water was calm here,
I was going into deep water, the rapids going downhill,
but trying to get to the other side
and head the boat to continue going up.
When we tried to start the engine, it didn't start,
we pulled it, we pulled it, we pulled it.
I'm like, "Curt, hold on."
We prayed again.
"Lord, please, this engine has to start."
I pulled half of the spinner out, the engine started.
I headed out at full speed.
The water was going down, and deep water on this side,
down to the start of the trip with that rough boulder.
When I went in, the engine hit a stick.
It lifted 'cause the stick was loose.
It went back into the water running without stopping.
I crossed that deeper part with my heart in my mouth
and Curt with his eyes wide open.
We crossed past that part. The rapids were going downhill.
We turned in the other corner on the other side of the river
and we started sailing, and there were no more rapids.
[gentle music]
I said, Curt, it was the last place.
When we were 600 meters away
from finding the big river again.
The rapids ended there.
They literally ended there, because we started sailing.
The branch got wider. We got into the other branch.
It was a relief, because there were no more rapids.
The water was running, but it was deep water.
The boat was like an airplane. It went and crossed.
It is made for that.
[gentle music continues]
And we went sailing and then we saw the hand of God.
'Cause after one to two hours sailing,
we heard a noise.
The plane was coming low.
[airplane engine whirring]
- [Interpreter] It didn't take us long to find them,
and it was a miracle of God.
The biggest miracle actually
was that they were able to get the engine running.
They repaired the boat and got it out.
Maybe if we had done the search a day earlier,
we would've flown long hours and wouldn't have found them.
- [Interpreter] The plane was coming low and then we saw it.
That made us happy. We jumped on the boat.
[airplane engine whirring]
- [Interpreter] Look at the plane. It's them.
They spotted us, and they started to fly overhead.
[airplane engine whirring]
- [Interpreter] The fear, what worried us.
The radio would announce that they had found us,
that we were alive.
The plane flew, came back, and they started throwing
the most important things in the world.
A lighter, a knife, some food.
They threw it so perfectly.
It came down tied in a ribbon, and I took it.
It was chocolate, some food,
and there was a note from Timothy, my son, he wrote,
"Dad, I don't know if you have radio there,
but if you don't have it, know that Brazil beat Argentina
[laughs] two to nothing in soccer today"
Rescued on the day Brazil beat Argentina two to nothing.
[dramatic music]
[dramatic music continues]
Many people think there's no way up or down.
I don't have emotional strength anymore.
I don't have physical strength.
The situation is completely out of human control.
God works.
God continues to be God in any situation.
It doesn't depend on our strength,
or on what we were ceasing to be, but on the grace of God,
and his hand is always there.
Can you imagine the injury
if I had stepped on the alligator,
if I had been bitten by a snake?
Or Curt had been bitten by a snake?
It would be a different story.
If that engine cord had broken,
it would be a different story.
If the engine had stopped in that situation,
the ending would be different.
The boat was never used again. It made just one trip.
It got there and we put it on the wall,
and it was never used again.
The story and teachings continue that God is wonderful,
and God's grace is better than life.
We keep moving.
I don't know how it ends,
but we cling to grace until the end.
[dramatic music continues]
- [Interpreter] Ah. There are no words.
It's the epitome of everything.
That's why I am happy. I'm more than happy.
Top notch. Oh yeah.
[dramatic music continues]
[gentle dramatic music]
[gentle dramatic music continues]