Uncontacted tribes to the rest of the world--please go away and leave us alone

[eridani]

http://www.guardian .co.uk/commentis free/2008/ jun/10/brazil

The message could hardly be clearer: leave us alone. In photographs taken from a low-flying plane, men from an uncontacted group deep in the Amazon forests, body-painted in red and black, draw their bows and arrows to shoot at the intruders in anger and fear. Another tribe living in voluntary isolation is being hunted out of existence.

There was massive public interest when these images were released by the Brazilian government last week, revealing an enormous curiosity about tribal people. And many indigenous people want non-indigenous people to listen to their ecological warnings and their philosophies.

But, in sharp contrast, those living in voluntary isolation, the so-called uncontacted tribes, wish no such thing. They want nothing to do with the dominant culture, and they communicate this clearly to "contacted" tribes nearby, begging their help to be left alone.

<snip>

In the Peruvian Amazon, I met an evangelical missionary who was hunting out uncontacted tribes, claiming he would ease the way for oil workers. The links between missionaries and the other extractive industries are well documented. He spoke of making a "responsible contact", but was risking bringing death. Which of the 10 commandments encourages that?

[Judi Lynn]

1. I read recently some of the tribes oil people and loggers are no doubt going to alter forever

are actually tribes who fled there from the oil work going on in the Peruvian jungle.

You may recall reading a year or so ago, maybe more, that in PERU they had discovered people in the road of their oil who had never been exposed to the outer world before, and they pretended to be wondering what to do about them.

Apparently some of them attempted to escape to Brazil, in order to avoid being harmed.

What a miserable shame.

I understand that whenever the missionaries get ahold of native citizens they totally flush away all the traces of their former way of living as quickly as possible. This is simply unforgiveable. How much has been lost because of this crude, abusive, personally, permanently destructive manner of dealing with their fellow man/woman.
of dealing with helpless people.

[semillama]

2. Uncontacted Tribe has been known about for decades

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jun/21/amazon?gusrc=rss&feed=worldnews


Secret of the 'lost' tribe that wasn't

Tribal guardian admits the Amazon Indians' existence was already known, but he hoped the publicity would lift the threat of logging


"They are the amazing pictures that were beamed around the globe: a handful of warriors from an 'undiscovered tribe' in the rainforest on the Brazilian-Peruvian border brandishing bows and arrows at the aircraft that photographed them.

Or so the story was told and sold. But it has now emerged that, far from being unknown, the tribe's existence has been noted since 1910 and the mission to photograph them was undertaken in order to prove that 'uncontacted' tribes still existed in an area endangered by the menace of the logging industry.

The disclosures have been made by the man behind the pictures, José Carlos Meirelles, 61, one of the handful of sertanistas – experts on indigenous tribes – working for the Brazilian Indian Protection Agency, Funai, which is dedicated to searching out remote tribes and protecting them. "