31
May

Uncontacted Tribe In Brazil Spotted

Author: jps61974

News about an uncontacted tribe in Brazil is making big waves in the academic and scientific communites worldwide. Members of an unknown Amazon Basin tribe and their dwellings are seen during a flight over the Brazilian state of Acre along the border with Peru in this May, 2008 photo distributed by FUNAI, the government agency for the protection of indigenous peoples. Survival International estimates that there are over 100 uncontacted tribes worldwide, and says that uncontacted tribes in the region are under increasing threat from illegal logging over the border in Peru.

The bow-and-arrow wielding Indians in the pictures released on Thursday are likely the remnants of a larger tribe who were forced deeper into the forest by encroaching settlement, experts said.

Rather than being “lost,” they have likely had plenty of contact with other indigenous groups over the years, said Thomas Lovejoy, an Amazon expert who is president of The Heinz Center in Washington.

“I think there is an ethical question whether you can in the end keep them from any contact and I think the answer to that is no,” Lovejoy said.

“The right answer is to have the kind of contact and change that the tribes themselves manage the pace of it.”

The Brazil-Peru border area is one of the world’s last refuges for such groups, with more than 50 uncontacted tribes thought to live there out of the estimated 100 worldwide.

They are increasingly at risk from development, especially on the Peruvian side which has been slower than Brazil to recognize protected areas for indigenous people.

Jose Carlos Meirelles, an official with Brazil’s Indian protection agency who was on the helicopter that overflew the tribe, said they should be left alone as much as possible.

“While we are getting arrows in the face, it’s fine,” he told Brazil’s Globo newspaper. “The day that they are well-behaved, they are finished.”

Contact with outsiders has historically been disastrous for Brazil’s Indians, who now number about 350,000 compared to up to 5 million when the first Europeans arrived.

“In 508 years of history, out of the thousands of tribes that exist none have adapted well to society in Brazil,” said Sydney Possuelo, a former official with Brazil’s Indian protection agency who founded its isolated tribes department.