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.
Some interesting details and photos here about remote tribes in Indian territory:
http://www.andaman.org/BOOK/chapter1/text1.htm
First contact tends to kill them off too fast for the modern medicines which first contactors don’t tend to carry in great amounts. Leave them alone.
Seem to be doing ok to me. They’ve lived there for how long? They probably have native medicine plants that deal with whatever illnesses and injuries they may have, just like our forefathers and the Native Americans. Why do Westernized countries have to spoil everything? Why can’t we just let them be? They’re not suffering, they are living the way they have for centuries. It’s not terrible, it’s their way of life. Take a warrior like that and try to introduce him to a city, to clothes and diet changes, to the stress involved in our everyday life, expect him to work for wages and you’ll wipe this tribe out in no time. Why do we feel we must inflict our culture, modernism and our way of life on EVERYTHING??
Didn’t seem to work with North American Indians. Hell, even sending in the U.S. Cavalry to mow them down didn’t work.
The history of contact is that those who “join the modern world” join it at the slums or on reservations and all that implies. Some do come out of the forest individually and if they survive their own “first contact” they disappear into the modern world and we don’t learn anything about them because they are not in the “care” of the sociologists.
No doubt, or their grandparents did.
Rumor has it that their chief has banned IPods and satellite dishes..........
[technologically advanced world]
Hard to tellbut the writerof thisarticle sure could usesome upto date lessonswith sentencestructure.
The notion that we should try to somehow bring these people into the technologically advanced world is preposterous.
Tells me you all are the descendants of colonialists.
I disagree....God will determine their fate, not you or I..........
There was a movie out this past couple of years that dealt with this same dilemma. A missionary "encroached" on one of these ancient tribes and ultimately was killed by them.
The movie dealt with the sacrifice of the missionary and his ultimate demise without giving the same analysis of the tribe that ultimately rejected him.
In other words, hooray for the missionary but so sad he died in the end. And oh yea, the heathens were at fault........
Holy crap, here comes the water! Head for the hills, we've got plenty of wood to rebuild the huts when the water subsides...........
People seem surprised by this. Why? There are whole areas of the planet in South America and Africa that have never been set foot on by a human being. (This is where ebola and other diseases come from, and why we have no defense against them). So it’s not a great leap to surmise that there are isolated pockets of humans who have adapted to their very local environment.
My comment, to which you replied, was one that was meant as a sarcastic retort to the "rotting in the jungle" comment. Actually I think you and I are on the same page.
I am also reminded of something that happened some 10 years ago or so. I was involved in a mining project in Chile, one of the goals of the project was to hire as many local natives as possible. During construction, many locals were hired and were to be trained on various jobs. They would all work for about three months then quit. This was repeated over and over. After some frustration and some interviews (through translators) it was figured out that the reason they were quiting was that they had received enough money, through the very high (to them) salaries to last them for the year, so they quit.
The solution to the problem was termed both simple and brilliant. These local natives, who mind you had been dirt poor, were sent catalogs, Sears Roebuck sort of stuff. These were intended for the wives. Low and behold after some time the men came back, because now they needed to pay for the things their wives were ordering.
Brilliant?
Actually, I found it rather sad because a market was created where no need previously existed.
I would hope some Christian missionaries soon attempt to reach them and preach the Gospel.
Why does the left want to leave these people to rot in the jungle?
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To the Liberal/Marxist they aren’t people, you see. They are pets!
If it were up to the liberal/Marxists all native peoples would still be eating slugs and dying by the age of 35.
Because their carbon neutral lives in balance with nature are an example for how the rest of us should live (sarcasm), except for the hunting. Whether we should also suffer from malaria and yellow fever and being eaten by pumas and lions is up in the air.
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NOT me!!! I was born and raised in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia. I am soooooo glad to be out of that decrepit demoRAT hole.
Most of the North American Indians were wiped out by European diseases before the first Europeans saw them. The Indians we encountered on the plains were the survivors. There had been a large population of semisettled people in the whole Mississippi watershed, the so called mound builders and their dscendants. They mostly died off in the 1500s and 1600s from the microbes probably brought with the first Spanish explorers.
New guinea
Because it's...PROGRESSIVE!
;-)
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