Giving the Amazon rainforest back to the Awa tribe
Logging in the Brazilian Amazon has had a devastating effect on the rainforest and its indigenous people. However, a new operation by the army, air force and military police is designed to save an endangered tribe - by keeping loggers off their land.
It took Pira'I two small steps to get up into the helicopter, but those steps bridged two completely different worlds.
Pira'I is a member of a 350-strong tribe called the Awa. They live in the last islands of rainforest in what is now the extreme eastern edge of the Amazon.
He grew up in a tiny nomadic tribal group, completely separate from the rest of the world.
Now, together with his friend Hamo, he was taking his first ever flight, leaving the jungle where they have lived all their lives.
They gave me a nervous smile through the window, then the engine roared and their faces vanished in a great eddy of leaves and dust as the helicopter rose up into the air.
This was a momentous trip for them, and for the entire tribe.
Pira'I
Pira'I was one of two taken in a helicopter to see the destruction of farmers' homes
Helicopter
The Awa are one of very few hunter-gatherer communities left in the Amazon basin.
Survival International, a pressure group that campaigns for the rights of indigenous people, has described the Awa as "the most endangered tribe on the planet".
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Over the last couple of decades illegal loggers and farmers have invaded their ancestral lands, destroying the forest.
I'd asked Pira'I what it was like growing up in the forest.
"We were always on the run," he told me. "We would find a place to sleep, then the loggers would arrive again to cut down our trees and we would go on the run again."
Pira'I and his family - like most of the Awa - were forced to give up their traditional lifestyle and move into villages. Incredibly, though, a few dozen Awa are holding out.
They remain uncontacted, living in the last stands of jungle in this region.
"It is a miracle they are not dead," one of the officers of Brazil's Indigenous People's Department, Funai, tells me.
Watch a preview of Justin Rowlatt's Newsnight film from the Brazilian Amazon
With his extravagant beard, Leonardo Lenin, lives up to his dramatic name. He has dedicated his life to fighting on behalf of the tribal people of Brazil.
"This is a story of resistance," he says.
"For 514 years our culture has been trying to dominate their culture, but they have survived."
And, thanks to the efforts of people like Leo Lenin and Survival International they are now much more likely to do so. ...
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-27500689