Remarkable photographs taken from a plane flying over the Brazilian jungle give us a unique insight into the lives of one of the world's last uncontacted tribes.

Gleison Miranda / FUNAI / Survival via AFP - Getty Images
An undated handout picture released January 31, 2011 by Survival International of what they say are uncontacted Indians seen from a Brazilian government observation aircraft in the Brazilian Amazon forest, near the border with Peru. The Indians appear be to healthy and could be running from Peru due to a invasion of their lands by loggers.
UPDATE: Survival International has confirmed the date of the photographs as June 2010.

Gleison Miranda / FUNAI / Survival via AFP - Getty Images
This man, painted with annatto seed dye, is in the community's garden, surrounded by banana plants and annatto trees.

Gleison Miranda / FUNAI / Survival via AFP - Getty Images
Men painted with red and black vegetable dye watch the Brazilian government plane fly overhead
The pictures were taken by the Brazilian government's Indian Affairs Department and released by the NGO Survival International as part of an effort to protect the tribe. They say that the tribe's survival is in serious jeopardy due to an influx of illegal loggers that may have pushed them across the border from neighboring Peru.
The photos show large vegetable gardens where the tribe grow fruit and vegetables; manioc, maize, sweet potato, pumpkin, peanuts, papaya, and bananas can all be identified. They also plant cotton which is spun and woven for skirts. The men have cotton waist bands and some have small head dresses. The men carry bows and arrows for hunting.
Survival's Director Stephen Corry said 'The illegal loggers will destroy this tribe. It's vital that the Peruvian government stop them before time runs out. The people in these photos are self-evidently healthy and thriving. What they need from us is their territory protected, so that they can make their own choices about their future.'
For more information on the uncontacted tribe, click here.
UPDATE: A number of readers have cast doubt on the veracity of the photographs - perhaps best summed up by this comment from allcarfan:
These are the same photos that were showed two years ago that were proven to be FAKE!!!
A set of photographs of the tribe were indeed published by msnbc.com and others in May 2008. However, the images above - which were made available to the media for the first time yesterday - are not the same photographs. A Survival International spokesperson has just confirmed to me that the images were taken in June 2010. For the sake of clarity and accuracy, I have therefore updated the title of this post to say Newly-released photos rather than New photos.
The controversy over the 2008 pictures was sparked by an article in The Observer headlined Secret of the "lost" tribe that wasn't. Later in 2008, Stephen Pritchard, that newspaper's readers' editor, wrote a follow-up piece in which he said the original article had misrepresented the situation.
Survival International has a series of questions and answers about uncontacted tribes, which explains further their definition of 'uncontacted'.
You can view the 2008 pictures in this Nightly News report, which also dates from that year:
UPDATE 2: Film footage of the tribe has now been released. Click here to watch it.


Que lastima por estos seres! El haber sido encontrados por el hombre moderno significa su de strución como "verdaderos nativos", no contaminados por el demonio financiero mundial, donde Dios es el sistema economico por el cual se valora a los hombres. El cual corroe y destruye la moralidad y los valores genuinos de las gentes del mundo. Lo iluso del hombre moderno es creer que el dinero le da poder sobre los demás seres. Lo da poder es la dignidad de ser una buena persona en el sentido moral de la palabra como tal! El hombre es un roedor de su propio semenjante, por dinero vende su conciencia y la civilizacion.
What makes people think they know so much? There are still so many things we don't know about our world, yet people want to act as if they know it all. These people may know that there is a world and a way that doesn't include them, and prefer to live and thrive without knowing. You can find the unknown in your own backyard if you look long and hard enough. Recently my husband and I were driving home and saw an animal run across the road in front of us that caused both of us to look at each other and say WTF was that?!! We didn't know what to think until several months later when a local news station ran a piece with a picture a boy had snapped on his way to school of an animal that even our news couldn't explain. The news claimed it could have been a chupacabra. I don't know what it is but it was the same strange animal that ran across the road in front of our truck that day, over 70 miles from where we had seen it. What was even funnier was the college professor who tried to explain it as a deformed, hairless, malnourished coyote! I know the picture the boy took was kinda blurry, but I saw the thing up close and personal, and professor, that was no coyote!!
they are just people the should just leave them alone
These people have lived like that forever, I have seem them first hand, they are kind and docile, they have had contact with "wide eyed" people...they don't want to come and join civilization, and the latinamerican countries all have associations to protect them. Why is everything such a big deal?? just let them be, they do have machetes and plastic bowls, and receive clothes and modern stuff, they just live happy the way they are and nobody really bothers them!!
This is an additional comment to an earlier post. The 1st and 3rd pictures appear to be taken from the air, or at least up in a tree. The 2nd picture, where the man allegedly has a cell phone to his ear, was taken at GROUND LEVEL, not more than the height of the banana trees. And again, the native is looking right into the camera. This 2nd picture was taken at ground level, not from a plane. How does the concept "uncontacted" fit this scenario, when a picture is obviously taken at 40 feet away from the native at ground level? Pic 2 was NOT taken from the air, nor from any distance. This is a picture taken in close proximity to the native, making it a face to face contact!! You cannot ignore obvious fact.
One more thing. If the 1st and 3rd photo's are taken from the air: a helicopter creates an enormous amount of downdraft - refered to as prop wash. There is no prop wash in these pics. If these pics were snapped from a moving airplane, the plane would have been dangerously low at treetop level. In danger of not only crashing into a tree, but being engaged as possible smugglers or drug runners by the Brazilian Military !!!
These pictures are far too clear, crystal clear, to have been taken from a moving aircraft. They are obviously posed and taken from a tree or platform. No one in the pics is moving, they are all "posing" for the camera. Don't believe me? Go ask any professional photographer in any of the cities or towns you live in.
Maybe it Josef Mengele and his followers?
There are many people in Mexico who do not speak English. Would you believe it? It seems so natural, so taken for granted to have our western civilisation that we have the tendency to disbelief of other cultures. And by the way, there are also people in Mexico (my "sample" place) who do not speak Spanish either.
All those sceptical, please follow the link given in the article: www.uncontactedtribes.org/articles/3109-questions-and-answers-uncontacted-tribes
Rich - In several of your comments you keep repeating that American whites did not commit genocide against American Indians, and of course you come up with your rationalization. First, would you define--which you haven't done yet--what genocide against American Indians 150 years ago would look like? Can you give at least one example of genocide against American Indians by whites, or was absolutely all the genocide committed by Indians?
Secondly, have you ever heard about or read about the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre in Southeast Colorado where a Colorado militia led by Colonel John Chivington--a civilian Methodist minister--attacked and slaughtered nearly all 500 Southern Cheyenne and Arapahoe men, women and children peacefully encamped on Sand Creek? How would you rationalize this slaughter of human beings? Genocide? A Sunday picnic led by Colonel Chivington? A rumble by bored whites who were looking for action?
Assuming, these are Native Amazonians have been currently displaced or during a previous government administration, I would hope that they can be part of an empowered community that can retain their connection to their forested homeland and take a central part of how the resources are preserved. I have not seen as much of this approach to respecting native peoples in East African preserves and this approach was along awaited afterthought for native peoples in North America. I might be more confident about a good outcome under the leadership of current Brazilian government. In the Brazilian forest, the illegal minors massacred or enslaved the native people they overran before Lula became the president. I think that native Amazon people deserve the same land rights priviledges whether they are uncontacted or repatriated community.
what no KFC, McDon, BK, Arbies...send in a rep and lets get some built
sad what happened to other such tribes in places like Borneo and east Indies
wiped out by the flu or other disease
This wonderful tribe is not blessed with a $42000 per person national debt, mortgages, narcotics, I-phones, Fox News and Glenn Beck, and all the other trappings of civilization we enjoy here in the good old USA. Perhaps they know something we don't.
Doesn't matter when the pics were taken. The message here is, "What part of leave us to hell alone do you not get"? Damn!!!
These are PEOPLE living a primitive life and are obviously natives. The illegal loggers should be stopped. These people should be left alone to make whatever contact they choose to make. Just for once can't the "civilized" people leave the indigenous people alone and find a way to make money without ruining the lives of others? Greed for money and the recognition of being the one to be to write mostly useless papers about more primitive people are never going to end until there aren't enough trees and no more isolated and happy people left. ===========Going all the way back to SamKnows 2011-- There is something they don"t know that we do. We have all those things Sam mentioned and we aren't a very happy people. The use of drugs to of all kinds to keep people free of pain and emotional/mood problems is a booming industry. Civilization was established to keep people safer and to cooperate in making life a little easier. From tribal to city state to country transition we have lost so much personal freedom and personal autonomy that we are confused and dissatified on every level and there is no going back. ===Really, what part of "leave us to hell alone" do we not get? The enchroachment on their habitat is theft and possibly genocide. It is enormously sad to so them go like every tribe found before them. Humans just can't leave anything or anyone alone.
These are PEOPLE living a primitive life and are obviously natives. The illegal loggers should be stopped. These people should be left alone to make whatever contact they choose to make. Just for once can't the "civilized" people leave the indigenous people alone and find a way to make money without ruining the lives of others? Greed for money and the recognition of being the one to be to write mostly useless papers about more primitive people are never going to end until there aren't enough trees and no more isolated and happy people left. ===========Going all the way back to SamKnows 2011-- There is something they don"t know that we do. We have all those things Sam mentioned and we aren't a very happy people. The use of drugs to of all kinds to keep people free of pain and emotional/mood problems is a booming industry. Civilization was established to keep people safer and to cooperate in making life a little easier. From tribal to city state to Country transition we have lost so much personal freedom and personal autonomy that we are confused and dissatisfied on every level and there is no going back. ===Really, what part of "leave us to hell alone" do we not get? The encroachment on their habitat is theft and possibly genocide. It is enormously sad to so them go like every tribe found before them. Humans just can't leave anything or anyone alone.
These are PEOPLE living a primitive life and are obviously natives. The illegal loggers should be stopped. These people should be left alone to make whatever contact they choose to make. Just for once can't the "civilized" people leave the indigenous people alone and find a way to make money without ruining the lives of others? Greed for money and the recognition of being the one to be to write mostly useless papers about more primitive people are never going to end until there aren't enough trees and no more isolated and happy people left. ===========Going all the way back to SamKnows 2011-- There is something they don"t know that we do. We have all those things Sam mentioned and we aren't a very happy people. The use of drugs to of all kinds to keep people free of pain and emotional/mood problems is a booming industry. Civilization was established to keep people safer and to cooperate in making life a little easier. From tribal to city-state to Country transition we have lost so much personal freedom and personal autonomy that we are confused and dissatisfied on every level and there is no going back. ===Really, what part of "leave us to hell alone" do we not get? The encroachment on their habitat is theft and possibly genocide. It is enormously sad to so them go like every tribe found before them. Humans just can't leave anything or anyone alone.
These are PEOPLE living a primitive life and are obviously natives. The illegal loggers should be stopped. These people should be left alone to make whatever contact they choose to make. Just for once can't the "civilized" people leave the indigenous people alone and find a way to make money without ruining the lives of others? Greed for money and the recognition of being the one to be to write mostly useless papers about more primitive people are never going to end until there aren't enough trees and no more isolated and happy people left. ===========Going all the way back to SamKnows 2011-- There is something they don"t know that we do. We have all those things Sam mentioned and we aren't a very happy people. The use of drugs to of all kinds to keep people free of pain and emotional/mood problems is a booming industry. Civilization was established to keep people safer and to cooperate in making life a little easier. From tribal to city state to country transition we have lost so much personal freedom and personal autonomy that we are confused and dissatified on every level and there is no going back. ===Really, what part of "leave us to hell alone" do we not get? The enchroachment on their habitat is theft and possibly genocide. It is enormously sad to so them go like every tribe found before them. Humans just can't leave anything or anyone alone.
Please excuse the repeats--stuck in some kind of a loop and can't get out