Amazon Yanomami Tribe to Take on Cybersquatters
Reuters, Copyright 2000
October 10, 2000
SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Davi Kopenawa Yanomami, a chief of a primitive Amazon tribe that inhabits virgin rain forest around the Brazil-Venezuela border, has been losing sleep lately.
News that a Florida woman -- lured by the prospect of a Hollywood movie on the tribe -- had nabbed the Yanomami name for the World Wide Web address http://www.yanomami.com and was auctioning it for $25,000 left Kopenawa stewing.
So much so that the Yanomami, one of the world's true Neolithic peoples, wants to reclaim the Web address ahead of the day it swaps its bows and arrows for cybertools, Fernando Bittencourt of the Pro-Yanomami Commission said on Monday.
``I was repelled to see that the name of my people was being used at the head of the (Web) page and that it's going to be sold for $25,000,'' Kopenawa said in a letter sent recently to Mercedes Meier, the owner of the site.
``The Yanomami name is not up for sale,'' he wrote.