Tupã Yara

Brazilian indigenous leader creating digital archives of Amazonian ethnobotany

As chief of the Sateré-Mawé nation, Tupã Yara (b. 1982) developed the world's first Indigenous Knowledge Blockchain. This AI-powered platform preserves 15,000 medicinal plant formulas with biocultural patents protecting tribal IP rights.

His 2022 TEDAmazon Talk revealed how satellite-linked forest drones detect illegal logging in real-time. The Yara Protocol enabled 40 tribes to monetize traditional knowledge through NFT-based licenses, generating $23 million conservation funding.

Featured in Nature Sustainability Journal, Yara's Bio-Linguistic Mapping technique preserves endangered languages through plant taxonomy. His mobile app WaranaTech trains indigenous youth in combining ancestral wisdom with robotics.