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Uncontacted Tribes Of The Amazon

What do we do?

  • Contact them to explain the outside world and then allow them to make up their minds

    Votes: 3 13.6%
  • Intervene and try to modernize their lifestyles

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Do everything possible to keep them isolated

    Votes: 19 86.4%

  • Total voters
    22
New images of remote Brazil tribe
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12325690

Panoan Indians. The group appears to be healthy and thriving

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New pictures have been released of an isolated tribe living in rainforest on the Brazil-Peru border.

Brazil monitors many such tribes from the air, and they are known as "uncontacted" because they have only limited contact dealings with the outside world.

Photographs of the same tribe were released to the world two years ago.

Campaigners say the Panoan Indians are threatened by a rise in illegal logging on the Peruvian side of the border.

But Brazilian authorities believe the influx of loggers is pushing isolated Indians from Peru into Brazil, where the two groups could come into conflict.

Survival International, the campaign group that released the pictures, says the group is likely to be in good health, with baskets full of manioc and papaya vegetables grown in their communal "gardens".

The tribe in question could be descended from indigenous people who fled the "rubber boom" around a century ago, when wild rubber became an international commodity and forest areas were opened up.
Communal garden (Gleison Miranda/FUNAI/Survival) The tribe has a communal garden where banana and annatto trees grow

These pictures were taken by Brazil's Indian Affairs Department, which monitors the indigenous groups using aircraft. The remote tribe has also been filmed by the BBC for its Human Planet series.

Members of the tribe are seen covered in red paint (known as urucum), which is made from seeds from the annatto shrub. Indigenous people use it to colour hammocks and baskets, as well as their skin.

The group is also seen using steel machetes - which must ultimately have been obtained from outside the forest. Fiona Watson, field and research director for Survival International, said the people are likely to have acquired these through trading links with other forest tribes.

"These networks have been in existence for centuries and I don't think they will have had any contact with non-tribal people, because if they had, the chances of being killed or contracting a disease to which they have no immunity are very high," said Ms Watson.

Ms Watson added that some authorities denied the existence of such tribal groups in the forest, in order to further their aims.
 
Mashco-Piro 'uncontacted' Peruvian tribe pictured
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16816816

Diego Cortijo used a telescope to get close-up images from a distance of 120m
Continue reading the main story
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Chance encounters near an isolated Amazon tribe have resulted in the most detailed pictures ever taken of them.

Campaign group Survival International has released images of the Mashco-Piro tribe, which lives near the Manu National Park in southeastern Peru.

The tribe has had little if any peaceful contact with the outside world, but sightings are on the rise.

Survival blames the change on gas and oil projects and illegal logging in the area, pushing the tribe into new lands.

The message that the Mashco-Piro tribe seems to be sending, however, is that they want to be left alone.

"There's been increasing conflict and violence against outsiders that are on their ancestral land," Survival's Peru campaigner Rebecca Spooner told BBC News.

That violence has included arrows being fired at tourists in passing boats, and a warning arrow - with no tip - being recently fired at a Manu park ranger.

Most recently, members of the tribe fired a lethal arrow at Nicolas "Shaco" Flores - a member of a different tribe who had been attempting to make formal contact with the Mashco-Piro for some two decades.

An account of the attack by anthropologist Glenn Shepard underlines the fact that the tribe is fearful of forming ties with the world around them.

So it was at a respectful distance of 120m that Spanish archaeologist Diego Cortijo snapped pictures of the tribe using a telescope mounted on a camera, capturing the most detailed images ever taken of such "uncontacted" tribes, many of whom are detailed at a site of the same name.

Ms Spooner suggested that the evident increase in violence could be abated by preserving the local tribes' traditional lands.

"We're asking the Peruvian government to do more to protect that land, which should be set aside for the uncontacted groups," she said.


Gabriella Galli spotted the tribe on a riverbank in August 2011
 
The massacre that never was.

Yanomami 'massacre' report dropped by Survival International
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-19556792

Members of the community told reporters there had been no killings

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'No evidence' of Amazon attack
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Venezuela university seeks to pass on traditional ways

Campaign group Survival International, which had urged Venezuela to investigate reports of a massacre of Yanomami people in the Amazon, says it now believes no attack took place.

Survival reached this view after speaking to its own sources, the group said.

Reports emerged in August that illegal gold miners had killed up to 80 people.

Venezuelan officials said a team sent to the area had found no bodies and no evidence of an attack.

The attack was alleged to have happened in the remote Irotatheri community, close to the border with Brazil.


The remote community lies deep in the Amazon rainforest
Survival carried reports from Yanomami organisations which described how illegal gold miners had set fire to a communal house, and how witnesses said they had found burnt bodies.

There were said to be three survivors.

On Monday, Survival International said this account did not appear to be correct.

"Having received its own testimony from confidential sources, Survival now believes there was no attack by miners on the Yanomami community of Irotatheri," said a statement from Stephen Corry, Survival International's director.

Tensions
Yanomami in the area, where many illegal gold miners are operating, had heard stories of a killing in July and this was reported, by some, as having happened in Irotatheri, Mr Corry said.

"We currently do not known whether or not these stories were sparked by a violent incident, which is the most likely explanation, but tension remains high in the area."


Life appeared to be continuing as normal, the visiting reporters said
The Venezuelan government said teams sent to investigate the reports had found no evidence of an attack.

Indigenous rights campaigners said the Venezuelan officials might have failed to find the community in question, which is based in a remote jungle location.

Journalists were then taken to the area on Friday and Saturday, where Yanomami villagers said there had been no violence.

"No-one's killed anyone," a Yanomami man said through a translator. "Here we are all fine."

Gold market
The Yanomami number an estimated 30,000, with their communities spanning the Venezuela-Brazil border area.

They have been resisting encroachment by gold miners for decades, accusing them of destroying the rainforest and introducing diseases.

In recent years the soaring price of gold on world markets has driven a surge in unlicensed gold-mining in many parts of the Amazon.

Survival called on the Venezuelan authorities to do more to evict miners from Yanomami land.

Military officials sent to the Irotatheri village said they had not found signs of mining activity in the area.
 
Peru's isolated Mashco-Piro tribe 'asks for food'
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-23766765

The tribe was filmed making contact with another remote community
'
Members of one of the most isolated tribes on Earth have briefly emerged from the Peruvian jungle to ask for food, according to local activists.

A group from the Mashco-Piro tribe made contact with villagers, apparently sparking a tense stand-off.

The tribe, which numbers in the hundreds, has had virtually no contact with the wider world.

Campaigners say logging and urban development have diminished the area in which the tribe can live.

The Mashco-Piro are one of several tribes designated by the government as "uncontacted people".

The government forbids direct contact because the tribes' immune systems are not thought able to cope with the type of germs carried by other Peruvians.

Anthropologist Beatriz Huertas told the Associated Press news agency that the tribe could sometimes be seen migrating through the jungle during the dry season.

But it was strange to see them so close to the village across the river, she said.

"It could be they are upset by problems of others taking advantage of resources in their territories and for that reason were demanding objects and food of the population," she said.

Footage filmed late in June and released by local rainforest campaign group AIDESEP and the Fenamad federation for indigenous rights showed the tribe members crossing the river.

Saul Puerta Pena, director of AIDESEP, said the footage showed the tribe asking for bananas.

"There is a canoe sent by another remote indigenous community, which does not live in isolation, to send them food," he said.

"But the tribe cannot come into contact with the remote community still because any illness could kill them."

There are thought to be between 12,000 and 15,000 people from "uncontacted" tribes living in the jungles east of the Andes.
 
Full text, images and vid at link.

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".

Continue reading the main story
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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
 
And the latest explorer to investigate an Amazon tribe is David Beckham! (Yes, that one!)

David Beckham Into the Unknown

After 22 years playing for the world's greatest football teams, David Beckham has retired. To mark the occasion he's going on an adventure in Brazil.

For the first time in his adult life he has freedom to do whatever he wants and to mark the occasion he's going on an adventure. He's chosen Brazil, and he's taking three of his closest friends to join him on this once in a lifetime experience. Starting with beach footvolley in Rio, the friends travel deep into the Amazon, ending up with the remote Yanonami tribe, with David desperately trying to explain the beautiful game.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0 ... he-unknown

Duration: 90 minutes. Days left: 6

The BBC calls the tribe the Yanonami. (But on this thread alone you'll also find Yanomani and Yanomami!) Reaching the tribe is shown at 01h 15m in.

Beckham comes across very well, IMHO - he's relaxed and interested. Definitely a people person. The children were fascinated by his tattoos!
 
A fatal clash of civilisations? 'Lost' Amazonian tribe under threat from illegal loggers operating in their traditional territories

The world was gripped by the sight of a previously uncontacted tribe in the Brazilian rainforest three years ago. What happened next has only just emerged – and it suggests their very existence is under threat

At first they were little more than fleeting sightings of naked figures on the edge of the forest. But as the days went by, the men and boys grew bolder, venturing into the village to pilfer pots and vegetables before disappearing back into the safety of trees.

After they were first glimpsed by other people on the outskirts of an Asháninka indigenous community on the upper reaches of Brazil’s Envira River, “a few dozen” members of an unnamed Amazonian tribe finally made contact with a settled population 20 days ago. That came four years after a tribal group, reportedly from the same Amazonian tribe, were filmed from the air in 2010. When the images were released in January 2011, they created a worldwide sensation.

It is believed the tribe had been driven across the border from their centuries’ old nomadic existence by the activities of illegal loggers and possibly drug-traffickers operating in their traditional territories in Peru. Brazil’s Indian Affairs Department, Funai, confirmed that the group had taken the momentous decision to make contact at the village of Sympatico in the state of Acre, more than a week’s travel by foot and canoe from the nearest road.

Sympatico, just 25 miles from the border, is very close to the area where a tribe group was filmed four years ago. It is estimated that there are at least four such communities living in Acre, constituting a population of around 600. A further two tribes are believed to occupy territory in Peru. But no one knows exactly how many individuals there are now living in the pristine forest of the western Amazon.


What is known, however, is that international concern over the presence of heavily armed loggers in Peru has been growing, sparking warnings that their activities could mean the end for the world’s last “lost” tribes. The mahogany and teak harvested by the gangs is believed to be destined to be made into garden furniture in Europe or the United States. Under international law the Indians have the right to their own traditional territories.

It is the first time since monitoring of the area began in the 1980s that a tribe has ventured forth willingly. “Contact was made and the situation continues to be peaceful,” Funai said. The group is said to have requested food and clothes.

José Carlos Meirelles, who has monitored this region for the department for 20 years, said the situation was unique. “Something serious must have happened. It is not normal for such a large group of uncontacted Indians to approach in this way. This is a completely new and worrying situation and we do not know what has caused it,” he said.

Now is the most perilous time for the Indians, it is warned. For the first time since their forefathers escaped the genocidal impact of the 19th-century rubber boom, they face new viruses – chicken pox, measles even the common cold – to which they have no immunity. Relocation also brings new threats of conflict with settled groups. ..

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 82973.html
 
Video: A journey to the territory of isolated tribes in the Amazon

Villagers along the Curanja River in Peru report sightings and even raids by isolated tribespeople who typically live a traditional life deep in the Amazon rainforest. Why are these isolated people emerging now, and can contact between worlds be managed without suffering?Science’s Andrew Lawler went to find out.


http://news.sciencemag.org/2015/06/video-journey-territory-isolated-tribes-amazon
 
Feature: Is Brazil prepared for a 'decade of contacts' with emerging tribes?

BRASÍLIA—In a spacious, art-filled apartment in Brasília, 75-year-old Sydney Possuelo takes a seat near a large portrait of his younger self. On the canvas, Possuelo stares with calm assurance from the stern of an Amazon riverboat, every bit the famous sertanista, or Amazon frontiersman, that he once was. But on this late February morning, that confidence is nowhere to be seen. Possuelo, now sporting a beard neatly trimmed for city life, seethes with anger over the dangers now threatening the Amazon's isolated tribespeople. “These are the last few groups of humans who are really free,” he says. “But we will kill them.”

For decades, Possuelo worked for Brazil's National Indian Foundation (FUNAI), the federal agency responsible for the country's indigenous peoples. In the 1970s and 1980s, he and other sertanistas made contact with isolated tribespeople so they could be moved off their land and into settlements. But Possuelo and others grew alarmed by the human toll. The newly contacted had no immunity to diseases carried by outsiders, and the flu virus, he recalls, “was like a suicide bomber,” stealing into a village unnoticed. Among some groups, 50% to 90% died (see sidebar). In 1987, Possuelo and fellow sertanistas met to try to stop this devastation. ...

http://news.sciencemag.org/latin-am...azil-prepared-decade-contacts-emerging-tribes
 
A visitor brings doom to an isolated tribe

COLUMBIANA, PERU—One day in the early 1950s, when he was a young child living with his family in the Amazon rainforest, Marcelino Pinedo Cecilio encountered his first outsiders. At the sight of light-skinned people who wore clothes, “my mother grabbed me and we ran into the forest,” recalls the 69-year-old.

Not long after, a man whom Cecilio remembers as a German anthropologist visited their isolated village on the upper Curanja River in this remote corner of the Amazon. (Anthropologists say the visitor may have been ethnographer and photographer Harald Schultz, who worked for what later became FUNAI, the Brazilian governmental agency that protects indigenous people.) “We were naked,” Cecilio says. “He came with machetes, mosquito nets, axes, and clothes.”

The visitor stayed 1 night before heading upriver, then returned a couple of weeks later, leaving behind a necklace of fish bones as a gift. Soon after, villagers developed a sore throat and burning fever. Cecilio estimates that 200 people died and the tribe scattered. “We were so weak, and some vanished into the forest.” The tribe blamed the necklace, thinking it was poisoned. ...

http://news.sciencemag.org/latin-america/2015/06/visitor-brings-doom-isolated-tribe
 
How Europeans brought sickness to the New World

In the Americas, the arrival of Europeans brought disease, war, and slavery to many indigenous peoples. Can some of the world’s last isolated groups avoid those fates as they make contact in the 21st century?

When the Taino gathered on the shores of San Salvador Island to welcome a small party of foreign sailors on 12 October 1492, they had little idea what lay in store. They laid down their weapons willingly and brought the foreign sailors—Christopher Columbus and his crewmen—tokens of friendship: parrots, bits of cotton thread, and other presents. Columbus later wrote that the Taino “remained so much our friends that it was a marvel.”

A year later, Columbus built his first town on the nearby island of Hispaniola, where the Taino numbered at least 60,000 and possibly as many as 8 million, according to some estimates. But by 1548, the Taino population there had plummeted to less than 500. Lacking immunity to Old World pathogens carried by the Spanish, Hispaniola’s indigenous inhabitants fell victim to terrible plagues of smallpox, influenza, and other viruses. ...

http://news.sciencemag.org/2015/06/how-europeans-brought-sickness-new-world
 
The tribesmen are really saying, "These fools have lost their G-Damn minds "

IMG_0448.JPG
 
Members of isolated tribe killed. Possible massacre.

They were members of an uncontacted tribe gathering eggs along the river in a remote part of the Amazon. Then, it appears, they ran into gold miners.

Now, federal prosecutors in Brazil have opened an investigation into the reported massacre of about 10 members of the tribe, the latest evidence that threats to endangered indigenous groups are on the rise in the country.

The Brazilian agency on indigenous affairs, Funai, said it had lodged a complaint with the prosecutor’s office in the state of Amazonas after the gold miners went to a bar in a town near the border with Colombia and bragged about the killings. They brandished a hand-carved paddle they said had come from the tribe, the agency said.

“It was crude bar talk,” said Leila Silvia Burger Sotto-Maior, Funai’s coordinator for uncontacted and recently contacted tribes. “They even bragged about cutting up the bodies and throwing them in the river.” ...

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...mbered-gold-miners-brazil-funai-a7940081.html
 
Members of isolated tribe killed. Possible massacre.

They were members of an uncontacted tribe gathering eggs along the river in a remote part of the Amazon. Then, it appears, they ran into gold miners.

Now, federal prosecutors in Brazil have opened an investigation into the reported massacre of about 10 members of the tribe, the latest evidence that threats to endangered indigenous groups are on the rise in the country.

The Brazilian agency on indigenous affairs, Funai, said it had lodged a complaint with the prosecutor’s office in the state of Amazonas after the gold miners went to a bar in a town near the border with Colombia and bragged about the killings. They brandished a hand-carved paddle they said had come from the tribe, the agency said.

“It was crude bar talk,” said Leila Silvia Burger Sotto-Maior, Funai’s coordinator for uncontacted and recently contacted tribes. “They even bragged about cutting up the bodies and throwing them in the river.” ...

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...mbered-gold-miners-brazil-funai-a7940081.html

The systematic killing of the last tribes Amazon dates from some decades now. I heard or read many of this histories. And once the gold diggers arrived to the brazilian Congress (the first of them was the infamous Major Curio, still in the 1990s) they have everything to act covered by the authorities. I'm sure that what we call "the last tribes" are aware of the menace and are going even further inside the jungle. But so are the gold diggers, the coffee farmers, the FARC, the Blackwater operatives and even the antropologists. They have few chances to keep hiding.
 
A lone survivor, still alive.

Remarkable footage has been released of an uncontacted indigenous man who has lived alone in an Amazon forest for at least 22 years.

Semi-naked and swinging an axe vigorously as he fells a tree, the man, believed to be in his 50s, has never been filmed so clearly before and appears to be in excellent condition.

“He is very well, hunting, maintaining some plantations of papaya, corn,” said Altair Algayer, a regional co-ordinator for the Brazilian government indigenous agency Funai in the Amazon state of Rondônia, who was with a team who filmed the footage from a distance. “He has good health and a good physical shape doing all those exercises.”

Known as the “indigenous man in the hole”, he is believed to be the only survivor of an isolated tribe. He hunts forest pigs, birds and monkeys with a bow and arrow and traps prey in hidden holes filled with sharpened staves of wood. He and his group were known for building holes and his hammock is strung over one in his house.

Loggers, farmers and land grabbers murdered and expelled indigenous populations in the area in the 1970s and 1980s, and this man is believed to be the only survivor of a group of six killed during an attack by farmers in 1995. He was first located in 1996 and has been monitored by Funai ever since. A glimpse of his face filmed in 1998 was shown in Brazilian documentary Corumbiara.

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/off...le-survivor-of-amazon-tribe-emerges-1.3571168
 
Tragic death.

A top Brazilian expert on isolated Amazon tribes has been killed by an arrow that struck him in the chest as he approached an indigenous site.

Rieli Franciscato, 56, died on Wednesday in a remote region of Rondônia state in north-western Brazil. He was in the area to monitor a tribe as part of his work for the government's indigenous agency, Funai.

An NGO founded by Mr Franciscato described him as an "excellent, serious and dedicated professional". The Kaninde Ethno-Environmental Defence Association, which he helped create in the 1980s, said the indigenous group had no ability to distinguish between a friend or a foe from the outside world. ...

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-54109584
 

Brazil Found the Last Survivors of an Amazon Tribe. Now What?


Jair Candor has spent 35 years searching for a man who did not want to be found — and this time, he just missed him.

That man, Tamandua Piripkura, has lived his life on the run. Not from authorities or enemies — though plenty of people would like to see him dead — but from modernity.

Tamandua is one of the last three known survivors of the Piripkura people, an offshoot of a larger Indigenous group that once spread across a large swath of the forest. He has lived isolated, deep in the Amazon rainforest, his entire life, believed to be about 50 years.

His partner in isolation had long been his uncle, Pakyi, as they trekked through the forest, nude and barefoot, with little more than machetes and a torch. (The third survivor, a woman named Rita, left the land around 1985 and married into another tribe.)

But Pakyi, older and weaker, recently began living near a Brazilian government base in the forest dedicated to protecting the two men. At the same time, Tamandua — seen as the best and maybe only hope for the survival of the Piripkura people — has vanished.

The men are at the center of a larger question that Brazil has been grappling with for years — one that poses major consequences for the future of the Amazon and the native people who have long inhabited it.

Who has the right to the forest?

https://dnyuz.com/2023/08/19/brazil-found-the-last-survivors-of-an-amazon-tribe-now-what/

maximus otter
 
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