BETWEEN US AND THEM: G1’S FRAMING OF THE YANOMAMI DEATH

Abstract

The Urihi Yanomami Association used photographic records to bring attention to the malnourished condition of the yanomami indigenous people in the Surucucu region of western Roraima. In January 2023, a photograph of a deceased indigenous woman, severely malnourished, was featured on the G1 news portal. During the same period, the yanomami association requested that the photograph be removed from the media. The paper’s central question is whether reporting the death of the indigenous woman, G1, in a mediatized context distances itself from the way the yanomami think about death in order to make the event intelligible in our culture. The guiding question is what frames of meaning the newspaper uses to translate the indigenous woman’s death into our culture. As a basis, this text draws on the concepts of happening (Quéré, 2005, 2012), framing (Goffman, 2012), culture with Eduardo Viveiros de Castro (2014), and the perspective of pragmatist philosophy. The framing given to the death of the indigenous woman was identified as being focused on the ‘public health’ frame. This was evident from the external links that the newspaper produced around the death. The article establishes a temporal framework that is not part of yanomami culture, making death a concept that does not align with indigenous cosmology. The conclusion drawn from the findings is that the framing of the indigenous woman’s death serves the purpose of making it understandable to non-indigenous readers.