Since then, Kopenawa has traveled around the globe to speak on the catastrophic consequences of the invasion of Yanomami land and the destruction of the Amazon rainforest.

[citation needed] Davi Kopenawa Yanomami was born near the Rio Toototobi near the border of Venezuela.

The acquisition of Portuguese language proficiency (then rare among the Yanomami) enabled Kopenawa to interact with Brazil's Lusophone majority both directly and through the mass media.

His wife lost much of her family to measles and other diseases brought to the area in the 1970s by road construction crews and garimpeiros (small-time gold miners).

In the process, he has visited many countries to spread his message about the importance of respecting indigenous peoples rights and their fundamental and unique role in conserving the rainforest for the benefit of humanity.

[10]In a CNN interview published in February 2023, Yanomami criticized Jair Bolsonaro, who served as the president of Brazil from 2019 to 2022, for encouraging mining in the Amazon Rainforest.

He also expressed hope for improvement of the situation with the crackdown starting in 2023 on illegal mining by the administration of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and the appointment of the first Brazilian Minister of Indigenous People, Sônia Guajajara.

Anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon wrote regarding Yanomami: His non-Yanomamö supporters in Brazil, intelligent and well-intentioned advocates of the Yanomamö cause, are promoting him as a spokesman for his people.

It was referred to by the Brazilian government when it planned to fragment Yanomami land in 1988, in a proposal which would have been catastrophic for them and which was only prevented by a vigorous campaign.

[12][13][14] Chagnon's views in this matter were criticized by investigative journalist Patrick Tierney in his controversial book Darkness in El Dorado.

[2] In 2009, he was honoured with the Bartolome de las Casas award in Spain[16] and later gave a speech to the UK parliament where he warned that the goldminers are once again invading Yanomami land and disease is spreading.

[18] In his role as activist and spokesperson for his community, Kopenawa has worked on a variety of published projects to disseminate Yanomami knowledge and warn the world of the ecological destruction caused by the extractivist exploitation of the Amazon.

It was originally published in French by Plon as La chute de ciel: Parales d’un chaman Yanomami, co-authored by Kopenawa and Bruce Albert, with a preface by Jean Malaurie.

The English version was published in 2013 by Harvard University Press, translated by Nicholas Elliott and Alison Dundy and with a foreword by Bill McKibben.

However, it was the decimation of the Yanomami by gold prospectors in the late 1980s that spurred Kopenawa's desire to speak to the Western world.

Its title, “Words Given,” asserts Kopenawa's intention to educate the Western world, to impart upon them the gift of the Yanomami knowledge.

In part two, Kopenawa narrates his encounters with “white men” and describes the devastating effects of the world’s extractivist activities on the forest and his people.

In part three, Kopenawa speaks about his time as an activist, his travels to the western world to spread the words of the Yanomami people, and his eco-apocalyptic call to action.

The translation maintains the meaning of Kopenawa’s words without establishing false equivalencies or flattening their particularities.