The Yanomami are a group of indigenous people who live in the heart of the Amazon forest in Brazil. They are being attacked by illegal gold mining cartels, which have invaded the Yanomami protected land, killing them and using hundreds of thousands of mercury during the illegal gold extraction, polluting the rivers, destroying the fish and causing famine and disease to the Yanomami in one of the worst humanitarian crises in Brazil's history. Yanomami death because of the illegal gold mining cartels has risen 2000% over the past 4 years.

Due to their isolation from the rest of Brazil, Yanomami genocide hasn’t gotten attention from the media, from the general Brazilian population and from the government. We needed an idea that would make Brazil pay attention, the media to report on the Yanomami genocide and the government to act and expel the illegal mining cartels from the Yanomami protected land.

We decided to use a high-profile global event that dominates the news cycle and social media in Brazil: The Oscars Ceremony.

With its high audience and the attention the event gets from the news and from social conversation, we used the fact that the actual coveted Oscar statue is plated in gold, the very same material that is causing the death of the Yanomami, and we created an alternative statue, made without gold and publicly offered it to 20 Oscar nominees.

We sent the statues and the message to the 20 Oscars nominees with the goal of being heard by the Brazilian population, the Brazilian media and the Brazilian government.

We created a statue of the Yanomami Xamã and creator Omama. Using all of the details of the Yanomami folclore and oral histories that date back hundreds of years and are passed orally from generation to generation.

The first of its kind Omama statue was hand drawn then hand made with clay, then sun-dried and painted with urucun oil and decorated with parrot feathers.

The 20 unique statues were wrapped in hand made fabric, that was painted and written on with a direct message to each of the 20 Oscar nominees.

No statue nor fabric is identical as they were all hand made by different Yanomami artisans.

The Statue dominated the news and social media in Brazil.

620 articles were written about the statue of Omama and the struggle of the Yanomami.

The statue was featured in the front page of all major newspaper in Brazil as well as talked about in dozens of TV stations.

The statue and the message became the number one trending topic during the Oscars.

The statue and the message were featured on the official Oscars broadcast in Brazil.

The statue and the message were posted on social media by hundreds of Brazilian celebrities and millions of Brazilians and two dozen elected officials, including the Secretary of The Environment, the Secretary of The Indigenous People and the newly elected President of the country, which two days after the Oscars announced a big intervention in Yanomami protected land to expel the illegal mining cartels.

$0 media investment that got $14M in earned media.

The Yanomami are indigenous people that live isolated from the rest of Brazil, in the hart of the Amazon forest.

They are attacked by Illegal Gold Mining Cartels that invade their protected land to extract gold. The illegal gold mining cartels use ruthless violence and also destroy the rivers and the forest with chemicals used on gold mining. They pollute the rivers, burn the trees and poison the fish and other animais, leaving the Yanomami without clean water and access to food as they rely on fish and game to eat.