Shouldn't that read: "a society doomed by the arrival of white Europeans five centuries ago"?
Pedro Alvares Cabral arrvied in Brazil with ships with Europeans of Caucasian, Middle Eastern and Negroid descent.
Perhaps it would be mor accurate to say, “a society doomed by the arrival of European pathogens five centuries ago.’ That was the true tragedy that no one understood clearly at the time as germs and disease vectors where not known or understood.