French Guiana: over 10,000 illegal gold prospectors are posing a threat to the environment and indigenous people. Brut Nature followed some members of the Kali'na people along the Surinam border.
Episode one of our series of stories on the impact of gold in Guiana.
Episode one of our series of stories on the impact of gold in Guiana.
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00:00There's a pirate coming, he's going to take care of himself.
00:30The Pirates of the Caribbean
00:44Everyone is hostile here. Everyone is armed.
00:49The Empire Warriors are criminals.
00:51Not directly the workers, because the workers are being swindled.
00:57There's a recruiter who's looking for workers.
01:02He's looking for a housewife, for example, on the Guyanese side.
01:06Poor worker, he doesn't know where he's going.
01:10So he takes all the passports,
01:14removes all the papers for 5 years,
01:17and the worker works for 5 years.
01:21To dispose of their merchandise.
01:24The pirates, when it's full,
01:26it's a maripaz or a kibun.
01:45We're leaving French Guyana,
01:48and now we're on the shores of Suriname.
01:51That's where everything happens, in terms of illegal shipping.
01:55All the material we find in the forest on the Guyanese side
02:00comes from Suriname.
02:03I'm going close to see.
02:06Maybe I can do it discreetly.
02:19They put mercury to amalgamate gold.
02:22All the dirty water flows,
02:25and the mercury stops.
02:28It's like a magnet.
02:30It stops the gold.
02:49You see here, at the time,
02:52when there were no illegal shippers yet,
02:55to dirty the water,
02:57at the time, the water was clear.
03:00So all the Amerindians here,
03:02all the indigenous people, I mean,
03:05they took water here.
03:08All the Amerindians took water here.
03:11All the Amerindians took water here.
03:15They took water here.
03:17Everything is polluted in Guyana.
03:19That is, in the forest in general,
03:21on the Suriname side,
03:23on the French Guyana side, which is opposite there.
03:25You see, compared to our Wayana brothers,
03:27who are on the upper Maori side,
03:29they can no longer eat, for example,
03:31the carnivores that ate at the time,
03:33the Aymara, the Piranhas, the Kumaro,
03:36because all the fish are contaminated.
03:39For me, it's contaminated due to mercury
03:42that they threw into the water.
03:44And then, on the terrestrial level,
03:46in the forest, it's the same thing.
04:04Why do we have toxoplasmosis now?
04:06Why do we have stomach pain?
04:08Why do we have handicaps?
04:10Why do we have suicides?
04:12These are people from outside
04:14who bring their illness to us.
04:16It breaks me a little.
04:18It breaks me.
04:20That's enough.