PART 1
Marutu Taawa: The Ancestral Heart
The Mountain They Stole — A GACN Investigation
High above the savannahs of southern Guyana rises a forested mountain the Wapichan people call Marutu Taawa.
To the outside world it appears on maps as Marudi Mountain, a remote peak in the South Rupununi region where prospectors search for gold believed to lie beneath its forested slopes.
Government documents classify the area as a mining district.
But for the Wapichan people who have lived in the region for centuries, the mountain is something entirely different.
It is an ancestor.
And today, they say, that ancestor is under threat.
The First Village
According to Wapichan oral history, Marutu Taawa is the birthplace of their people. Elders describe the mountain as the “First Village”—the place where the earliest clans emerged and where the spiritual relationship between the Wapichan and their land began.
Across the mountain’s slopes lie traces of this history: petroglyphs carved into rock faces, burial grounds, and ceremonial sites associated with centuries of Indigenous presence throughout the Guiana Shield. Archaeological research has documented extensive rock art and cultural landscapes across southern Guyana connected to long-term Indigenous settlement.¹
These places are not abandoned relics.
They are part of what anthropologists call a living cultural landscape, where spiritual practice, subsistence, and historical memory remain intertwined with geography.
International law increasingly recognizes this relationship. The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) affirms that Indigenous peoples have the right to maintain and strengthen their spiritual relationship with lands and territories they have traditionally owned or occupied.²
For Wapichan communities, Marutu Taawa is inseparable from identity.
An elder from the South Rupununi described the mountain in terms both practical and sacred:
“Marutu Taawa is our church, our supermarket, and our pharmacy.”
The statement is not metaphorical.
It is a literal description of how life in the South Rupununi has functioned for generations.
A Mountain That Sustains Life
The forests surrounding Marudi Mountain form part of the Guiana Shield, one of the largest intact tropical forest regions on Earth and a globally significant center of biodiversity.³
Several creeks flowing from the mountain supply freshwater to communities across the South Rupununi. Hydrological studies show that upland forest watersheds in the Guiana Shield are critical for maintaining water flow during seasonal droughts.⁴
For villages such as Aishalton, these creeks are lifelines.
The surrounding forests also support wildlife populations central to Wapichan subsistence. Anthropological studies confirm that hunting, fishing, and forest harvesting remain essential components of food security for Indigenous households across the Rupununi.⁵
Deer, tapir, peccary, and numerous bird species move through the mountain’s ecosystems along routes known to local hunters for generations.
Equally important are the mountain’s medicinal plants.
Ethnobotanical research has documented extensive traditional knowledge among Wapichan healers regarding plant-based medicines used to treat infections, fevers, wounds, and digestive illnesses.⁶
Some of these plants grow primarily in upland forests such as those found on Marudi Mountain.
If those forests disappear, elders warn, entire knowledge systems may vanish with them.
Evidence of Environmental Change
Although Marudi remains geographically remote, modern environmental monitoring tools are beginning to reveal how the landscape is changing.
Satellite monitoring systems operated by Global Forest Watch, which analyze data from NASA and European Space Agency satellites, show increasing forest disturbance linked to mining activity across parts of Guyana’s interior.⁷
While Guyana still maintains one of the lowest national deforestation rates in the tropical world, small-scale gold mining has emerged as a primary driver of localized forest loss in interior regions.⁸
Mining operations also pose risks to freshwater systems.
Scientific studies across the Guiana Shield have documented how artisanal and small-scale gold mining often releases mercury and sediment into rivers and creeks, contaminating aquatic ecosystems and threatening downstream communities.⁹
For communities dependent on mountain watersheds, these changes can have profound consequences.
INVESTIGATIVE SIDEBAR
Satellite Monitoring and Mining Expansion
Satellite monitoring platforms such as Global Forest Watch, Planet Labs, and Sentinel-2 imagery have become essential tools for tracking deforestation in remote mining regions.
Environmental researchers use these systems to detect:
- forest canopy loss
- river sediment plumes
- mining pit expansion
- road construction into previously intact forests
Across the Guiana Shield, satellite imagery has repeatedly revealed unlicensed mining activity occurring far from regulatory oversight.
Because many mining sites are located in remote areas inaccessible by road, satellite monitoring often provides the first independent evidence of environmental change.
Sacred Sites at Risk
Community leaders say that some of the mountain’s cultural heritage sites have already been damaged.
Several elders report that petroglyphs and other sacred sites on Marudi Mountain were destroyed or disturbed during mining operations in recent years.
Across the Guiana Shield, mining activity has repeatedly been linked to the disturbance of Indigenous cultural heritage landscapes, including rock art sites and burial areas.¹⁰
The full scale of the damage at Marudi remains unknown.
Large portions of the mountain are now controlled by mining operations, and independent archaeological surveys have never been conducted across much of the area.
Restricted access means that some cultural losses may never be fully documented.
For Wapichan elders, the destruction of these sites represents more than historical loss.
It is what many describe as spiritual violence.
Each destroyed carving erases part of the physical evidence that their ancestors lived there.
EVIDENCE BRIEF
Mercury and Gold Mining in the Guiana Shield
Gold mining throughout the Guiana Shield commonly uses mercury amalgamation, a process in which mercury binds with gold particles before being burned away.
Scientific research shows that this practice releases mercury into:
- rivers and creeks
- fish populations
- surrounding soils
Studies published in Science of the Total Environment and other peer-reviewed journals have documented elevated mercury levels in aquatic ecosystems near mining zones throughout the region.⁹
Mercury exposure is associated with:
- neurological damage
- developmental disorders in children
- kidney and cardiovascular disease
These risks are particularly significant for Indigenous communities whose diets rely heavily on fish.
A Relationship Older Than the State
The Wapichan presence in the South Rupununi predates the creation of modern Guyana by centuries.
Anthropological and historical research confirms that Wapichan communities have long inhabited territories stretching across southern Guyana and northern Brazil.¹¹
Their land rights were not created through colonial deeds or government titles.
They were established through continuous occupation and stewardship.
International human rights law increasingly recognizes this principle.
In the landmark ruling Saramaka People v. Suriname (2007), the Inter-American Court of Human Rights held that Indigenous and tribal communities possess collective property rights over lands they have traditionally used—even when those lands are not formally recognized by the state.¹²
The Court emphasized that territorial rights are essential to the “physical and cultural survival” of Indigenous peoples.
The ruling also established that governments must obtain free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC) before approving large-scale development projects affecting Indigenous territories.¹³
For Wapichan communities, Marutu Taawa falls squarely within that principle.
The Unanswered Question
Yet despite this history, Marudi Mountain remains outside the boundaries of officially titled Wapichan land.
Instead, the area has increasingly been treated as a mining frontier.
For the Wapichan people, the consequences of that decision are already becoming visible: damaged forests, altered waterways, and growing restrictions on access to ancestral sites.
The conflict surrounding Marudi is therefore not simply about gold.
It is about the recognition—or denial—of a people’s relationship with the land that shaped them.
And it raises a question that sits at the center of this investigation.
If the mountain is the heart of the Wapichan people, what happens when the state refuses to acknowledge that bond?
In the next part of this investigation, GACN examines the paper trail of a land claim that has remained unresolved for decades—and the government decisions that allowed mining to move forward while the claim remained in bureaucratic limbo.
Sources
- Denis Williams — Prehistoric Guiana.
- United Nations — UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2007).
- World Wildlife Fund — Guiana Shield Biodiversity Assessment.
- WWF Guianas — Freshwater Ecosystems of the Guiana Shield.
- James Mentore — Of Passionate Curves and Desirable Cadences.
- Forte & Melville — Ethnobotanical research in the Rupununi.
- Global Forest Watch — satellite forest monitoring data for Guyana.
- Guyana Forestry Commission — national forest monitoring reports.
- Veiga et al. — “Mercury Pollution from Artisanal Gold Mining,” Science of the Total Environment.
- WWF Guianas — mining impacts on Indigenous heritage landscapes.
- Neil L. Whitehead — Indigenous Peoples of the Guiana Highlands.
- Inter-American Court of Human Rights — Saramaka People v. Suriname (2007).
- Inter-American Court jurisprudence on Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC).
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