At around midday on 11 May, Dario Kopenawa, an indigenous leader, received a desperate phone call from a remote village in the Brazilian Amazon.
Kopenawa, who is from the Yanomami tribe, is used to hearing pleas for help from communities in the rainforest, but this one was different.
An indigenous man was grazed by a bullet in the head, Kopenawa learned, and four miners were injured.
He avoids going to areas where they are because of death threats and, after the call, he alerted the authorities, saying something had to be done.
The next day, a team of federal police travelled to Palimiú on a small plane, and were joined by Junior Hekukari, who heads the local indigenous health council.
If even the police were being attacked, he said, none of his people was safe.
The intrusions by garimpeiros in indigenous reserves have intensified under far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, who plans to open some of the areas to mining and agriculture.
Alisson Marugal, the federal prosecutor in Roraima, said they had been encouraged by a surge in gold prices and an order by Funai, the government’s indigenous affairs agency, that limited field work because of the pandemic.
The reserves are one of the most effective ways to protect the Amazon, the world’s largest rainforest and a huge carbon store that helps slow down global warming.
The president, whose own father was a garimpeiro, is particularly critical of the extension of the Yanomami territory, established in 1992 in a region where vast mineral riches are located.
In Congress, the Bolsonaro government is pushing an agenda that opponents warn poses an existential threat to the Amazon and, consequently, to indigenous people.
Kopenawa is the son of the respected shaman and leader David Kopenawa, who led the campaign that resulted in the creation of the Yanomami reserve.
Last year, illegal mining devastated an area equivalent to 500 football fields on Yanomami land, according to ISA, and it is likely to result in even more destruction this year.
Raids by Funai, which has suffered successive budget cuts, are carried out with the federal police, the army and Ibama, the environmental protection agency.
Joenia Wapichana, the only indigenous member of parliament and a representative of Roraima, pointed to an ideological change at the agency, which is currently led by a federal police officer with links to agribusiness.
As the pandemic raged in the Amazon last year, the Yanomami created a barrier on the Uraricoera, Roraima’s longest river, in an effort to stop the transit of boats around Palimiú.
Audio messages shared in a WhatsApp group believed to be used by illegal miners suggested the attackers were affiliated to a facção, or criminal organisation.
Alisson Marugal said the suspicion was that criminals had been hired to protect the mining fields, and that they were believed to be behind the recent violence.
They also fired what appeared to be tear gas, and the Yanomami despaired when they felt their eyes and throats burn.