PROVIDENCE -- The Yanomami Indians have a rich vocabulary to describe the flora, fauna and lush landscape of the Amazon. They use different words to describe quantities of flat things, round things, liquids.
And they know the lay of their land: where each village lies, where the rivers run, where their gardens are planted, where the miners have invaded.
But until very recently, the Yanomami Indians couldn't write their own words. They knew only three numbers: "one," "a pair," and "many." And their knowledge of geography didn't translate into maps.
So when the invaders came, they weren't just overpowered by modern technology: they didn't have the cultural tools to defend themselves.
This is why the Yanomami teachers who visited Rhode Island College yesterday are so important to their communities.
Since 1995, a project by the Pro-Yanomami Commission in Brazil has been teaching children and adults how to read and write their own language, do math, work with maps.
"We want to learn to defend our nature and our forests and our animals," said Dario Yanomami, a teacher from the Brazilian village of Demini. "We want to learn to defend our land."
And because they now trade extensively with the outsiders, they need to know their math. "We have to make sure that they don't cheat us."
THE YANOMAMI Indians live in an area stretching from southern Venezuela to northern Brazil, so deep in the rain forest that they managed to remain isolated for centuries.
While the South American countries became industrialized, the Yanomami people kept to their traditions, living in extended family groups in malocas -- little villages -- and subsisting by hunting, fishing, gathering, and farming.
Then, in the 1980s, a gold rush drew thousands of miners to the rain forest, and with them came epidemics, massacres, loud airplanes and machinery, and mercury contamination to the pristine waters the Yanomami Indians used to bathe in and drink.
Since then, the Yanomami homelands have been mapped out and protected by law, but miners and ranchers continue to be a threat. In Brazil, the government has helped the Indians somewhat, though the nation's congress is considering a law that would open the Indians' land to mining. In Venezuela, the situation is even worse.
Yesterday's visitors came from Brazil: Dario; a teacher from Ajuricaba, Antonio Dias; and a medical worker, Geraldo Yanomami, from Toototobi.
They were here as guests of Cultural Survival, a Boston group that advocates for the rights of native peoples worldwide. Marcos deOliveira, a Brazilian who coordinates the Yanonami education project, came with them.
RIC anthropologist and linguist Gale Goodwin Gomez, who has been working in the Amazon for years and was a key player in creating a written version of the Indian groups' languages, introduced the group to the RIC audience, and served as their interpreter, translating their remarks from Portuguese.
"We are doing this because we are concerned about the future -- the preservation of our culture, our language, our beliefs, our shamanism," said Antonio.
Geraldo, who has been trained to use lab equipment to test for different strains of malaria, among other things, said the Brazilian government's health-care aid could be cut off anytime. And in Venezuela, the Indians have no help, and are dying in droves, or crossing the border, seeking help.
DeOliveira said the Pro-Yanomami Commission is working on the premise that the Indians' contact with outsiders will only increase with time, so the focus is on helping them to deal with the outsiders more effectively.
But the Yanomami people don't want to be assimilated, Antonio said: "We want to continue with our hunting and gardens, and our traditional celebrations. We don't want to end this."
Whether or not they succeed -- and the tide, Goodwin Gomez said, is against them -- the Indians are adopting tools of the outside world to help them in their fight for survival.
There's the literacy program, the math, the cartography lessons. The next step, the visitors said, is to get computers, video and other equipment, to produce and disseminate educational materials as well as newsletters and books to promote their cause. They're looking for all the help they can get.
"History has shown that we get good results when the public . . . supports our cause," deOliveira said.
To contact the Yanomami education project or for more information, e-mail Gale Goodwin Gomez at ggoodwin@ric.edu The Cultural Survival Web site also has extensive materials about the Amazon Indians' plight: http://www.culturalsurvival.org
