Astonishing photographic evidence of a heretofore non-contacted tribe of Brazil's Amazon jungle surfaced this week. The photography was carried out by Brazil's department for Indian affairs (Funai), from the air and shows a number of indigenous tribes people painted red and black and wielding spears and longbows at the agency's helicopter.
Close to Envira, a region in the western Amazon, bordering Peru, the agency sought out evidence of these tribes in order to avert the threat of illegal logging in the region. In Peru, uncontacted tribes such as the ones photographed this week have already been attacked and dispersed by agents from illegal logging companies who are often prepared to kill in order to gain access to the raw materials surrounding the settlements of the indigenous communities.
There are skeptics against whom these photographs represent a significant coup for Funai because it has been long contested that these communities exist at all. The pictures of the thatched roof houses of this small community represent one sixth of the tribes' total. There are said to be five more villages all comprising of communal housing and existing as part of the jungle's natural ecosystem.
The Brazilian Government have not tried to contact such tribes for many years as part of its preservation policy, however experts are calling for a more stringent system to be implicated in order to ensure the future safety of such tribes' existence. As the small tribes' way of life has remained unchanged for thousands of years there is little they can do to defend themselves against the large logging corporations that threaten to encroach upon their territory and threaten their lives.
The reaction of the tribe to the Funai Helicopter was to don war paint and threaten it with longbows. This represents not only their incapacity to defend themselves against contemporary weaponry but also their ability to adapt to the intervention of the outside world. Should a tribe be forced into Diaspora the chances of their survival would be slim.
Many ethnologists believe that, much like that of an endangered species of animal or plant life, the safety of the indigenous peoples' way of life is the responsibility of the Brazilian Government. In the past, tribes that have been contacted have lost 50% of their population within a year as a result of outside influence and it is a serious concern that if the Brazilian Government does not take adequate steps to ensure the safety of such tribes their existence will almost certainly be depleted within the next decade.
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This post was written by Edward Harkness on June 3, 2008