The Falling Sky

Davi Kopenawa

Bruce Albert

Translated by Nicholas Elliott

Alison Dundy

“Kopenawa provides a fascinating glimpse into his life as well as into Yanomami cultural beliefs and practices, setting his story against the various threats the Yanomami people and their forest have faced since the 1960s… Kopenawa’s story is eloquent, engaging, and thought-provoking, exuding heartfelt wisdom. This extraordinary and richly detailed work is an outstanding explication of the Yanomami worldview as well as a plea to all people to respect and preserve the rain forest.”—Elizabeth Salt, Library Journal (starred review)

“I have just read your manuscript and am enormously impressed by this work of such powerful methodological interest and prodigious documentary richness. It wholly captivates the reader yet is simultaneously so complex, raising so many questions.”—Claude Lévi-Strauss, letter to Bruce Albert, July 10, 2006

“The words of the Yanomami shamans are powerful: they conjure up another world responsible for this one. Davi Kopenawa proves it for us. Not only do his words give us an unparalleled experience of the life of the Yanomami, but his moving description of their struggle to save the forest and themselves from destruction by the whites reveals the modern tragedy of indigenous peoples in ways we never imagined.”—Marshall Sahlins, University of Chicago

Related Links

• Read excerpts from The Falling Sky in which Davi Kopenawa explains the threats to his people’s way of life »
• At Survival International (the movement of tribal peoples), read some of the many responses to the myth of the “Brutal Savage”
• Keep up with international news and view photos pertaining to Kopenawa and the Yanomami people at Bruce Albert’s Facebook page for La Chute du Ciel