Raoni Metuktire

Raoni Metuktire
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Chief Raoni Metuktire, 2013
Metuktire, Kayapo people leader
Personal details
Born	Circa 1931 Kapot, State of Mato Grosso, Brazil
Known for	Resistance to the Amazon Rainforest industrialization and deforestation
Nickname(s)	Raoni

Raoni Metuktire, also simply known as Chief Raoni or Ropni, born ca. 1930, is an important chief of the Kayapo people, a Brazilian Indigenous group from the plain lands of the Mato Grosso and Pará in Brazil, south of the Amazon Basin and along Rio Xingu and its tributaries. He is famous internationally as a living symbol of the fight for the preservation of the Amazon rainforest and of indigenous culture.

Cacique (native american word for chieftain) Raoni Metuktire was born in the State of Mato Grosso in or around 1930, in the heart of the Brazilian part of the Amazon rainforest, in a village called Krajmopyjakare (today called Kapôt). Born in the Metuktire family of Kayapo people, he is one of Cacique Umoro’s sons. As the Kayapo tribe is nomadic, his childhood was marked by moving continuously from one place to another and he witnessed many tribal wars. Guided by his brother Motibau, at the age of 15, he chose to have a painted wooden lip plate (called ‘botoque’ by the warriors of his tribe) placed under the lower lip.

Raoni and other members of the Metuktire tribe encountered the Western World for the first time in 1954. Initiated into the portuguese language by Orlando Villas-Bôas, the eldest of the Villas-Bôas brothers and a famous indigenous anthropologist in Brazil, the young Raoni was ready for the Kuben’s invasion (Kuben meaning « the others », « white people »).

In 1964, he met King Leopold III of Belgium, while the latter was on an expedition into indigenous reservations in Mato Grosso.