The yano, a doughnut-shaped, thatched house inhabited by the Yanomami tribe, can shelter several hundred people under one roof and is a human extension of the forest - a symbol of one tribe's harmonious relation with the natural world. Like all of Brazil's 305 tribes, the Yanomami rely on the environment for their livelihood and spiritual wellbeing. A semi-nomadic people, they live by hunting, gathering and fishing, their botanical and zoological knowledge honed over hundreds of years of using 500 plant species for food, medicines, hunting poisons, body paint and to weave hammocks and baskets. Brazil's indigenous peoples have survived more than 500 years of genocide since the first European colonists arrived: from an estimated 6-10 million in 1500, the population crashed to some 100,000 individuals in the 1950s. Due to its resilience and ingenuity, in the last six decades the indigenous population has risen to now comprise some 900,000 individuals but, over that time, the Yanomami in Brazil have witnessed profound changes to their world. An isolated people with little or no immunity to Western diseases, many died from flu and measles transmitted by workers bulldozing a highway through their land in the 1970s. In the 1980s, they lost 20 per cent of their population to disease, as well as violent attacks when illegal goldminers invaded their land.
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