After Bolsonaro’s Attack at the UN, Misinformation Campaign in the Media Affects Chief Raoni

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Entitled “The farce called Raoni,” a text of unknown origin has gained visibility on social media by being shared in three different profiles on Facebook between September 27th and 28th.

The publication suggests that the indigenous leader used US$10 million that would have been donated by the British cosmetics company to buy luxury cars and mining machines. All of it is untrue.

To check the information, Estadão Verifica approached the general coordinator of the Raoni Institute, Edson Santini, who since 2009 has been in charge of the organization’s accounts and denies any transfer of the mentioned amounts.

The Body Shop in Brazil has also published a note in which it says it is unaware of “the information recently disclosed in WhatsApp groups”. Check out the full verification:

The text states that Anita Roddick, founder of The Body Shop, ordered the company not to open any store in Brazil “because of the greatest disappointment in her life,” and adds that the brand only reached Brazil after the businesswoman died, in 2017.

Anita, however, died ten years earlier, in 2007, and the brand reached the country in 2014, after a partnership with the Brazilian network Empório Body Store. In September 2017, it was purchased by Natura Cosméticos.

The publication further mentions that the “disappointing experience” is described in one of the books published by the businesswoman. In Business as Unusual – The Triumph of Ann Roddick (available at the Open Library), Raoni is not even mentioned.

The book cites the entrepreneur’s experience in Brazil, but only reports the meeting with two kayapo leaders: Paulinho Paiakan and Pykative Pykatire.

The two were leaders from a region in the south of Pará, while Raoni is from a village on indigenous land in the north of Mato Grosso. Another inaccurate information is that Raoni is from the “Yanomami tribe” – present in the states of Roraima and Amazonas – when in fact he is Kayapo, an indigenous group from the states of Mato Grosso and Pará.

There is also incorrect information in the following passage: “Fascinated with all that nature and after bathing naked in the Rio Negro in the company of the Indians (picture this in an English woman’s mind), she determined that her company would make donations of US$10 million through the NGO Cobra Coral to buy medicines and install outpatient clinics and schools in the indigenous communities”.

Raoni’s tribe is located in the Xingu basin, not in the Rio Negro.

The “NGO Cobra Coral” seems to be a reference to the Cacique Cobra Coral Foundation, an institution founded by Ângelo Scritori, already deceased, who presented himself as a medium. Sought by the report, the foundation failed to comment on the subject.

The only organization directly linked to the chief is the Raoni Institute, founded in 2001, with headquarters in the municipality of Peixoto Azevedo (MT). The institution is in charge of managing projects in the areas of monitoring, inspection, and surveillance of indigenous lands, income generation and sustainability in the production chain.

Edson Santini, the institution’s general coordinator, states that the financing is provided by public notices and the Amazon Fund.

Since his speech at the United Nations General Assembly, President Jair Bolsonaro‘s attacks on Chief Raoni have had repercussions. More recently, he stated that the indigenous leader “does not speak for all Indians.” On another occasion, Bolsonaro said that Raoni was “co-sponsored” by heads of state.

The full text of The Body Shop’s statement reads as follows:

“The Body Shop is unaware of the information recently disclosed in WhatsApp groups and explains that Dame Anita Roddick, founder of the company, was a pioneer in the sustainable beauty segment in the world. In 1987, she launched the program Trade not Aid, now known as Community Trade, which is still in force today at The Body Shop, which consists of buying accessories and natural ingredients from producing communities for a fair price, allowing them to develop socially and economically.”

“Through this program, The Body Shop has already bought chestnut oil from an ethnic group in the Brazilian Amazon, as it has already done in other countries. Today The Body Shop relies on several communities producing ingredients worldwide, including Brazil with the babassu oil community in the region of Lago do Junco, Maranhão, a relationship that has existed for over 20 years.”

Before Anita died, she and her husband, Gordon, met the founders of Natura in one of their visits to Brazil. The brand opened its first stores in the country in 2014, three years before Natura acquired The Body Shop.

Source: Estadão