James Cameron's real-life blockbuster

MROTIDJAM VILLAGE, Brazil - One by one, the tribal leaders of the Brazilian Xingu took to their feet, wearing yellow and red feather headdresses and clutching thick wooden clubs and spears.

Having travelled for days to reach the gathering in the isolated village of Mrotidjam, the Xikrin Kayapo elders stepped forward to address their visitor, a man they knew simply as Cameron.

"If they build this dam, our children will die," said one, his eyes painted a fiery red with seeds from the urucum tree.

Sitting before them, the guest, better known outside the rainforest as Hollywood player and director of the blockbuster 3-D film Avatar, James Cameron, listened intently before addressing his hosts.

"We're here to listen to you, to hear your concerns and to share this with the outside world," he said. "We're just here to help in any way we can."

Sitting with him were Sigourney Weaver and Joel David Moore, who starred in Avatar, which charts the fight of the fictitious Na'vi people against outside attempts to pillage their resources on the planet Pandora.

Until last month Cameron had never been to the Brazilian Amazon.

Now, however, he has become the figurehead of an international campaign against Amazon destruction and specifically the multibillion-dollar Belo Monte hydroelectric dam project, which many of the indigenous residents of the Xingu region believe will destroy their communities, flooding land in some places, drying up rivers in others and triggering an influx of workers, prostitution and disease.

It seems Cameron has found his own Pandora, a situation, as he said, "where a real-life Avatar confrontation is in progress".

Now, he says, he plans to shoot a 3-D "experiential" documentary about the plight of the region's people and their battle against Belo Monte.

"We've got a spotlight on us right now to raise awareness in certain key areas ... and I think that is important," said Cameron, who is working in Brazil alongside the US-based NGO Amazon Watch.

The dam on the Xingu river would cost an estimated £7 billion ($15 billion) and be the third biggest of its kind.

The Brazilian Government has described the project as a "gift from God" and a key ingredient in attempts to boost the country's economy.

But environmentalists and many indigenous leaders believe the dam is another step towards the destruction of the rainforest and its traditional peoples.

"We believe that Belo Monte is just the beginning," said Sheila Juruna, an indigenous leader from the Xingu region.

"If we let them do this they will end up ... killing off Brazil's Indians once and for all."

Cameron, who describes himself as "a curious monkey" fascinated by history, energy and the environment, said that witnessing indigenous ceremonies and meetings in the Amazon had made him reflect on the plight of the North American Indians and inspired him to attempt to give the "global consciousness ... a heads up".

Not all Brazilians have taken kindly to Cameron's engagement with the indigenous cause.

"This type of intervention strengthens the belief ... that the aim of the ecological movement is simply to maintain the status quo of the world economy," one columnist wrote in the Monitor Mercantil newspaper last week, adding that "Cameron's colonialist message" was an attempt to "exterminate the future of Brazil".

Brazil's Energy Minister, Edison Lobao, told the Record news channel Cameron was an "extraordinary director" who understood "nothing about electric energy".

Before bidding farewell to the Kayapo elders, Cameron made a final speech. "The rivers and the forests have a moral right to continue to exist as they have for thousands of years. And I believe that you have a moral right to exist as you have for thousands of years."

The leaders responded with applause.

Outside, vultures hovered menacingly in a cobalt sky. "Probably the defining battle in human history is happening during our lifetime," said Cameron.

- OBSERVER