Amazon Indian to climb Ben Nevis

This page was created in 2013 and may contain language which is now outdated.

Nixiwaka Yawanawá, a 26-year-old Yawanawá Indian from Brazil, is set to be the first Amazon Indian to climb Ben Nevis – the highest point in the British Isles.
 
Nixiwaka will be available for pictures on Saturday 1 June at 8.30am at The Caledonian Hotel, Achintore Road, Fort William PH33 6RW, before climbing Ben Nevis.

Nixiwaka will climb the mountain in the Scottish Highlands with fifteen other supporters of tribal rights organization Survival International, to raise awareness of the plight of the Awá tribe.

The Awá are Earth’s most threatened tribe and one of the last remaining nomadic hunter-gatherer tribes in Brazil. But they are finding it increasingly difficult to hunt as illegal loggers, ranchers and settlers destroy their forest and chase away the game. 

The situation is particularly critical for the 100 uncontacted Awá who are facing extinction due to the illegal invasion of their forest home. Uncontacted tribes, such as the uncontacted Awá, entirely depend on the forest for their survival and are vulnerable to diseases brought in by outsiders – a common cold could kill them.

Uncontacted Indians near Nixiwaka’s community in western Brazil also face serious threats as illegal loggers are destroying their forest on the Peruvian side of the border.

Nixiwaka told Survival, ’I’m very excited about climbing Ben Nevis. It is a great way for me to highlight the problems that my brothers the Awá are facing.’  

Notes to editors:

- Nixiwaka Yawanawá came to London to learn English and to speak out for the rights of Indigenous people of the Amazon. His tribe, the Yawanawá, numbers over 600. 

- Visit Nixiwaka’s fundraising page

- Ben Nevis means ‘Mountain of Heaven’ in Gaelic, and stands at 1,343 meters or 4,000 feet.

For all enquiries please contact Ghislain Pascal +44 (0) 7778-788735