Posted on 05/30/2008 3:55:58 PM PDT by marthemaria
Dramatic photographs ofpreviously unfound Amazon Indians have highlighted theprecariousness of the few remaining "lost" tribes and thedangers they face from contact with outsiders.
The bow-and-arrow wielding Indians in the pictures releasedon Thursday are likely the remnants of a larger tribe who wereforced deeper into the forest by encroaching settlement,experts said.
Rather than being "lost", they have likely had plenty ofcontact with other indigenous groups over the years, saidThomas Lovejoy, an Amazon expert who is president of The HeinzCenter in Washington.
"I think there is an ethical question whether you can inthe end keep them from any contact and I think the answer tothat is no," Lovejoy said.
"The right answer is to have the kind of contact and changethat the tribes themselves manage the pace of it."
The Brazil-Peru border area is one of the world's lastrefuges for such groups, with more than 50 uncontacted tribesthought to live there out of the estimated 100 worldwide.
They are increasingly at risk from development, especiallyon the Peruvian side which has been slower than Brazil torecognize protected areas for indigenous people.
Jose Carlos Meirelles, an official with Brazil's Indianprotection agency who was on the helicopter that overflew thetribe, said they should be left alone as much as possible.
"While we are getting arrows in the face, it's fine," hetold Brazil's Globo newspaper. "The day that they arewell-behaved, they are finished."
Contact with outsiders has historically been disastrous forBrazil's Indians, who now number about 350,000 compared to upto 5 million when the first Europeans arrived.
"In 508 years of history, out of the thousands of tribesthat exist none have adapted well to society in Brazil," saidSydney Possuelo, a former official with Brazil's Indianprotection agency who founded its isolated tribes department.
CONCERN OVER PERU POLICY
In recent years, though, tribes like the Yanomami havesucceeded in winning greater protection by becoming morepolitically organized and forming links with foreignconservationists.
"It's not about making that decision for them. It's aboutmaking time and space to make that decision themselves," saidDavid Hill of the Survival International group.
More than half of the Murunahua tribe in Peru died of coldsand other illness after they were contacted as a result ofdevelopment for the first time in 1996, Hill said.
Sightings of such tribes are not uncommon, occurring onceevery few years in the Brazil-Peru border area where there areestimated to be more than 50 out of the total global number of100 uncontacted tribes.
In 1998, a 200-strong tribe was discovered by Possueloliving in huts under the forest canopy, also in Acre state nearthe Brazil-Peru border.
In September last year, ecologists looking for illegalloggers in Peru spotted a little-known nomadic tribe deep inthe Amazon.
The sighting underscored worries among rights groups thatoil and gas exploration being pushed by the Peruviangovernment, as well as logging, is putting tribes at risk.
Peru has no equivalent to Brazil's long-standing Indianaffairs department, which has a policy of no contact withunknown tribes.
"There is a lot of logging going on over on the Peruvianside," Hill said. "It's had all kinds of effects on the groupsliving there, particularly on the uncontacted groups -- it'sled to violent conflicts and deaths."
In May, Peru's petroleum agency Perupetro said it wouldexclude areas where isolated tribes live from an auction of oiland gas concessions. Perupetro had been under pressure to limitexploration activities near tribal areas, and had cast doubt onthe existence of isolated groups, angering activists.
“contact between technologically advanced cultures and more primitive cultures invariably turns out bad for the less developed culture. They’re wiped out by disease, driven off their land, etc. That’s the way it’s been throughout human history. And if there are alien civilizations out there in the universe, it’ll probably happen to the human race as a whole if we ever make contact. Left vs Right notwithstanding, I don’t see a very good outcome for these people. Probably better for them if they had remained undiscovered.”
Bears repeating! Let them decide what they want. It’s no one else’s business.
And if you’re lucky, you’ll have time to explain what you’re there for before you end up with an arrow through you! ;)
Well, that’s a good point. Anyone who paints themselves red, or orange (must mean something in that tribe) and then tries to shoot down aircraft with an arrow, probably is not the campfire chatting type.
It sounds like something Jimmy Carter should do.
Do you wonder, what they thought of this aircraft? My son and I were talking about this last night. Have they ever seen a plane or chopper fly over? Do they even know there are people in it? I’m assuming they have no idea of machinery or anything mechanical, so what was going through their minds? If you’d never seen anything like a plane before, how you could ever fathom what it was - it must just seem incredible and unearthly to them, with their isolated experience. Obviously they were making threatening gestures with their weapons but you’ve still got to look at it as incredibly brave. I would love to know what their thoughts were that evening.
"Did you make sure to cover up the satellite dish with those bushes?"
Those are pretty healthy lookin’ warriors brandishing those bows, lol. As far as slugs, well...not something I would want to eat but I’m sure they eat more than slugs. And in every culture, everywhere, people have eaten what is available to them. Native people everywhere eat things that we say ‘Ewww!’ to. I don’t fancy haggis but it’s a pretty popular dish in Scotland. I think pork brains are gross but people here eat ‘em with their scrambled eggs. The first man to ever try a lobster or oyster was pretty brave and people probably thought he was crazy. We’re the spoiled ones, with our prepackaged foam trays of meats, far removed from the source.
From all the photos at the Reuters site, it looks like red guys are warriors, orange guys are just guys, and black chicks don’t have to wear makeup at all. Or much else.
I don't think that makes us spoiled. It makes us efficient and fairly healthy. Our life expectancy has gone up almost two decades in the past 100 years. We've been becoming much taller over the past 200 years. Most of that can be attributed to nutrition, and probably the rest to medicine.
I agree those warriors appear to be almost fat, something I wouldn't have expected. There's no way to tell from the photos, but I'd expect them to be fairly short, probably under 5'5".
But whatever they're eating, it seems to be enough. They're surviving, or at least the ones we see are.
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Just adding to the catalog, not sending a general distribution. |
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update:
“Uncontacted” Amazon Tribe Actually Known for Decades
National Geographic News | 6-19-2008 | Kelly Hearn
Posted on 06/21/2008 1:17:49 PM PDT by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2034464/posts
“There is a lot of logging going on over on the Peruvianside,” Hill said....
And the truth comes out about this man’s motivation for lying about this situation.
When we attacked the Taliban and the locals met our soldiers they asked why we were there and where we were from. Many had never even heard of the United States.
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