© Photograph: Fiona Watson / Survival
Uncontacted Tribes:
By Choice or By Chance?
Indigenous peoples in a remote Amazon rainforest area near the Peruvian-Brazilian border were photographed for the first time in May 2008 by Gleison Miranda, who was in a small plane flying overhead along with Jose Carlos dos Reis Meirelles. Painted bright red, the tribal people appeared visibly upset. Probably thinking the plane was a huge bird and fearing for their safety, they armed themselves with bows and arrows, their most fatal weapon.
Other than a few anthropologists, the public was unaware of the tribe’s existence because they lived "uncontacted" from the outside world. Reis Meirelles, an anthropologist from FUNAI, the Brazilian government’s Indian Affairs Department, had Miranda take the pictures "to show their houses, to show they exist." He wanted to highlight a monumental crime against the tribes, nature and the world: every year 28,000 hectares (around 69,200 acres) of the Amazon Forest is destroyed by "civilized" developers.
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“A history of violence, abuse, slavery, death and genocide has shown these tribes how cruel and harmful the outside world can be.” |
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"Uncontated tribes" are groups of people who, either by choice or by chance, live without contact or considerable interaction with modern civilization, explains Beatriz Huertas, an anthropologist from CIPIACI (Association for the Protection of Uncontacted Tribes). Jonathan Mazower, an anthropologist from Survival International, a passionate advocacy group supporting tribal people worldwide, believes there are about 100 uncontacted tribes that they know about. Although uncontacted tribes exist worldwide, most are located in the Amazon rainforest, especially in Brazil. Commenting on the photographed tribe, Mazower agrees that they were likely afraid and sending a message to go away and leave them alone.
A history of violence, abuse, slavery, death and genocide has shown these tribes how cruel and harmful the outside world can be. Mazower explains: "Mostly these people, especially the ones in South America, are the descendents of Indian tribes who experienced massacres and atrocities a hundred or more years ago. This principally occurred during the Amazonian ‘rubber boom.’ Europeans set up companies and exploited the Indians for slave labor to gather wild rubber. The tribes were devastated, and around 90 percent of their population were killed as a result of the violence and newly introduced diseases. Many of the Indians survived only by retreating into the remotest part of the jungle – the rivers’ headwaters. Today’s uncontacted Amazonian tribes are often these survivors’ descendants. Thus, their collective memory tells them that outside society is dangerous and should be avoided."
"The Massacre of the 11th Parallel," a 1963 Brazilian incident, is recounted by Survival International as being a truly infamous case of genocide against the Cinta Larga (long belts) tribe. According to records, Antonio Mascarenhas Junqueira, owner of the Brazilian rubber company Arruda, Junqueira & Co., hired a small plane from which he dropped sticks of dynamite directly into the Cinta Larga village below. More murderers followed on foot to finish the devastating attack.