Posted on 10/10/2008 8:01:19 AM PDT by Justice Department
Recent photos of an "uncontacted tribe" of Indians near the Brazil-Peru border have sparked media reports of a hoax, but the organization that released the images defends its claims and actions.
The photographs, which showed men painted red and black and aiming arrows skyward, were released in late May by Survival International, a London-based organization that advocates for tribal people worldwide. The release stated that "members of one of the world's last uncontacted tribes have been spotted and photographed from the air,"
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
“I saw that many years ago. I remember the eskimo getting new teeth as a bribe.”
In the excellent film “Never Cry Wolf” an Americanized Inuit explains his missing teeth and new dentures as “That’s what happens when a meat eater becomes a sugar eater.”
Where he got the money for dentures is an interesting twist.
See it again.
I’ll check it out on Netflix. I saw it when I was 11.
You're basing your opinion on the assumption that they can make an "informed" choice. How can they make an informed choice when their world view extends out to what, +-100 square miles? And that area consists of Amazon rain forest.
If the arrows don’t scare the chopper off, there’s a SAM-2 concealed in the long hut.
Yes, I believe in self-determination.
It’s a basic conservative tenant. I don’t try to run other people’s lives for them, or think I know better than they what choices they should have.
Liberals try to censor what parents teach their children -— you know, the “foul” Bible and “homophobia” and whatnot in it -— and we are horrified at the Liberals’ efforts.
This is just the sae paternalism, different situation.
The conservative choice would be to give them more information and let them make an informed decision.
And, sadly, like most people they’ll choose poorly, just like our “informed” nation will probably choose the Obamination.
“Little buddy!”
Later! :)
Then, wouldn't leaving them be also fit that tenant? You are basically arguing here that they should have their whole world turned upside down, inside out.
It would be one thing if they are aware of "civilization" and made the choice to make contact with them(us) and begin to interact in a limited and cautious way. And who's to say that they haven't observed aspects of the modern world as they traversed their territory and beyond, but chose to stay away.
But ripping them out of their world, showing the big bad modern world and saying "choose" to live here, or go back to the forest, is interfering with their lives, which you say violates conservative tenants.
It is far better therefore, to make contact and introduce measles or TB or flu.
Instead of 35, the life expectancy curve approaches 0.
Who is for “ripping them out of their world”?
Contact is inevitable; and when that occurs, it’s their business.
Mel, The Village People called. They want you back.
How awful! Sharing God’s love?! Must be stopped!
(In seriousness, how much of this “leave the savages alone” is really anti-missionary sentiment?)
Everybody gets the flu. It’s spread by migratory bird poop, last theory I heard.
There's no gettin' around it
The NY Times had this story of a strange beast of the Amazonian jungles that the natives there call the mapinguary - which means "the roaring animal" or "the fetid beast." Many researchers believe that this is a legendary animal, but natives insist that they continue to see them. It is described thus:
"... all accounts agree that the creature is tall, seven feet or more when it stands on two legs, that it emits a strong, extremely disagreeable odor, and that it has thick, matted fur, which covers a carapace that makes it all but impervious to bullets and arrows."
Stories from the natives have intrigued many outsiders:
"So widespread and so consistent are such accounts that in recent years a few scientists have organized expeditions to try to find the creature. They have not succeeded, but at least one says he can explain the beast and its origins.
“It is quite clear to me that the legend of the mapinguary is based on human contact with the last of the ground sloths,” thousands of years ago, said David Oren, a former director of research at the Goeldi Institute in Belém, at the mouth of the Amazon River. “We know that extinct species can survive as legends for hundreds of years. But whether such an animal still exists or not is another question, one we can’t answer yet.”
I find the possibility that the legends are based on native contact with Megatherium fascinating and this seems to agree with some North American Indian legends. Adrienne Mayor's interesting book, Fossil Legends of the First Americans, does an excellent job in tying Indian legends of giant birds, giant bears, giant beavers, and other huge monsters to native memories of condors, teratorns, the short-faced bear (Arctodus simus - half again as large as the largest grizzly), the giant beaver (Castorides ohioensis - as large as a black bear) , mammoths and other extinct Pleistocene birds and animals.
But the natives still say that the mapinguary is a living animal. They have almost convinced some people:
"Glenn Shepard Jr., an American ethnobiologist and anthropologist based in Manaus, said he was among the skeptics until 1997, when he was doing research about local wildlife among the Machiguenga people of the far western Amazon, in Peru. Tribal members all mentioned a fearsome slothlike creature that inhabited a hilly, forested area in their territory.
Dr. Shepard said 'the clincher that really blew me away' came when a member of the tribe remarked matter of factly that he had also seen a mapinguary at the natural history museum in Lima. Dr. Shepard checked; the museum has a diorama with a model of the giant prehistoric ground sloth."
"'There’s still an awful lot of room out there for a large sloth to be roaming around,' Dr. Shepard said."
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