Unreported World

Unreported World travels to the heart of the Brazilian rainforest to reveal how some of the earth's most isolated people are being affected by the world's financial crisis, which is causing the price of gold to rise to record levels.

As the price of gold rises, thousands of miners are illegally mining in remote territory set aside for the indigenous Yanomami people, who have had little contact with the outside world. The miners bring disease, alcoholism and prostitution, as well as ecological devastation. Reporter Jenny Kleeman and director Paul Kittel ask whether this gold rush could mean the Yanomami tribe die out completely.

Kleeman and Kittel begin their journey in Boa Vista, still a thriving Amazon gold town, despite the 1992 ban on mining in the Yanomami Reserve that outlawed all gold mining in the region. Kleeman meets a miner who is currently working illegally in Yanomami territory. He says he can earn up to ten times the average monthly wage here, and has no other way support himself financially.

The team accompanies the Brazilian Airforce on a mission into the Amazon in search of illegal mines. Flying just above the treetops, the crew spot a perilous landing strip cut into the jungle by wildcat miners. The Colonel promises to report the landing strip to the Federal Police.

After an arduous trek through the jungle, they arrive in a remote Yanomami village where a third of the villagers recently contracted malaria. Miners had diverted the course of a nearby river, leaving it stagnant and attracting mosquitoes that caused the outbreak. If medical treatment had not arrived in time, the outbreak could have spread across the region and turned into an epidemic.