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Subscribe to RSSEarlier this week we published photos of an uncontacted Amazon Indian tribe living close to the border between Brazil and Peru. Now, film footage of the same tribe has been shown on the BBC's Human Planet series.
Survival International, the NGO that released the photos, says that the tribe's survival is in jeopardy due to illegal logging in the area where they live.
Following the publication of the photos, the Peruvian government has acknowledged for the first time the threat posed to the tribe.
In a statement released on Feb. 2nd, Peru's Foreign Ministry announced that they will "establish contact with Brazil's FUNAI institute [Indian Affairs Department]… to preserve these peoples and avoid the incursion of illegal loggers and the depredation of the Amazon."
According to John Vidal of The Guardian, "The change has been remarkable. Only two years ago, Peruvian president, Alan Garcia, queried the existence of any uncontacted groups of Indians anywhere in Peruvian forests."
Survival International has a series of questions and answers that explain how they define uncontacted tribes.
Related content:
Newly-released photos of uncontacted Amazon Indian tribe give us a glimpse of another world
Leave a Comment:
If there is any humanity left in us at all, we must leave these uncontacted people alone. I would not wish the ills of our "civilization" on anyone. I say, let them live onwards in peace and simplicity. How I wish I could live the way they do.
You expressed my feelings exactly. Thanks, Dustin
In an era of UFOs, it looks like "First Contact" has already been made. As to oil companies and loggers, they can be controlled with restraints on inventory.
Why did they feel it was necessary to fly in with a helicopter AND a fixed wing?
The commentary explained that in order to protect them their existence must be proven. Government are the ones who can help protect them and unfortunately government aren't buying that they exist. Film footage now provides clear proof. Contact is inevitable, but it can be reduced and slowed down. This couldn't be done on the ground. Contact and disturbance must be minimized in order to protect, hence the plane and helicopter and being 1km away.
Yes, leave them alone-their lives do not need to be "civilized"-Read "The Only Way", by Bartolome de las Casas, a Domican priest who was there when the conquistadores invaded the New World and totally destroyed a gentle culture ( Christ-like) in the name of God,glory, and gold. Unspeakable horrors, tortures, and slavery inflicted upon men. women. and children. Eventually they had to go to Africa to replace the slaves they murdered and worked to death. Hitler's extermination of Jews was kind in comparisom. I had to put the book down-it showed the worst side of human nature.
Your comparrison of Hitler is a gross unjustice to the jewish people!! Shows your ignorance.
yes 150 of slavery to over 2000 yrs jews have been the most persecuted people in all civilization. INCLUDING BEFORE CHRIST dunce ....
You would live that way until the first couple of days and then you would begin to feel dirty, you'd be eaten alive by mosquitoes, have spiders crawl on you at night, and then you'd be begging to get back to civilization and air conditioning. We humans have progressed to the point where we live longer more comfortably and these people just haven't progressed beyond spear chucking.
Hey Brandon, I'd much rather chuck spears in the jungle with the Great Spirit as my ally than live in your small world full of racism and ignorance.
"All peoples are changing all the time and always have, including uncontacted tribes. Survival doesn’t talk about ‘pristine’ tribes or cultures. They are not backward or ‘Stone Age’, they just live differently."
-Survival International
These Tribes worst enemy would be any Christian Missionary who felt compelled to trek through the jungle and try and convince these people they needed to be SAVED.
Next would be a rep from an oil company or timber company telling them how they could all live the good life if they will just "sign your x here".
What you're all talking about is the same thing that happened when the white man arrived in north america , slaughtering Native Americans (same thing) and yes, alot of them were slautered for refusing to become Christians. That's how we are here today. It was not pretty, as they wanted us to believe in school.
For God's sake leave these people alone, that's all they want or they would've made contact with us already. There is now way, we, as a "civilization" can bring anything but a downfall to their world. Somethings truly are better left alone!
Well I disagree with your assessment (extensive contact with the outside will only bring their downfall), I am in agreement with your reasoning. "uncontacted tribe" doesn't really mean what most think it means... they are aware that there is more out there and probably even have some modern tools gotten through trades. The fact is they know they have a choice and have rejected extensive contact and wish to remain as isolated as possible from the rest of the world.
They are informed and they made their intention known; that is reason enough to leave them alone.
right, uncontacted more or less means they have been isolated for a few generations and are not apart of the modern world. If someone went to them they could give them a cold and turn to pneumonia and wipe them out just like that. One thought on this tribe is that they were escaped people from the Rubber operations in the 1800s and escaped into the jungle forming tribes. They still have some metallic objects like a machete one of the kids is holding and pans that are metallic that as said may be traded with other tribes. But almost everything is from the jungle aside from that.
Some really interesting and uncontacted tribes are the Jarawa in the Andaman Islands. They only made contact in 1996 and other tribes on these islands killed any ship wrecked people that came to the islands over the 1800s. The Jarawa and other tribes may have lived on these islands for 65000 years uncontacted and isolated as direct decedents almost unchanged from The first people to leave Africa. Wiki the islands and the people. Really interesting stuff
Yes! How un-civilized those "spear chuckers" are!! They should be as "civilized" as us, with our air conditioning, shopping malls, guns, credit cards, stereotypes, racism, nuclear bombs, and drugs. Jeez, HOW have they existed this long without our help?!!? (Heavy dose of sarcasm.)
Did the pilot drop them an empty Coke bottle?
I find this an intersting situation, in that we have a Peruvian tribe deep in the jungle, never before contacted by an outsider, so it says........could this be the final, the last group of people to preach the gospel too? Could this mean that all the other prophecy of the bible that is leaping forth is substantiated by this article? And it truly is the begininning of the end. I hope so, cuzz aint nothing gonna fix the mess we are all in, in fact those huts deep in the Peruvian jungle may very well be the safest place on the planet.......food for thought. Not an inch of sarcasm, either.
We must conquer them and then let them build a Casino?
It won't be long before this small part of the world will be destroyed, their traditions, customs gone in a blink of an eye.
Grasshopper you have learned well.
I am reminded (sadly) of the fate of the "true" Hawaiians after the greedy actions of the mainland American Pinapple plantation exploiting robber barons entered Hawaii. History records that within a decade nearly 90% of the original Hawaiian people were wiped out due to diseases, deplorable working conditions (worked like slaves in the pineapple plantations, etc) and then finally the ulimate insult.....the removal of the Queen (of Hawaii) from the throne, amove sanctioned and supported by our own U.S. Senate!!! Please DO NOT allow this to happen to the uncontacted tribes of Peru. Allow them to continue to live their lives peacefully and without interference from outsiders.
I was incensed and exercised, vamped to make a bitter comment before reading all the other contributions, which have sensitively, succinctly and elegantly embraced everything I wanted to say. So I'm greatly unburdened, and my fire has gone out. Yes, what the hell was he doing flying in there with two planes above an area he admits nobody knew anything about before. And Yes, now he's given the exact location away for any and all of the human parasites to descend on them now! Just...leave....them...alone....!
How do we send impact protest and awareness which results in protective intervention?
Can we really stand by and be, "Someone should do something..."
?
Look at yourself
no comment
Why no comment? Why take the time to type no comment. Are you not commenting in saying no comment?
Chas
Our World is better today than at any point in the history of the Human Race. We have been on this Earth, in our current form, for over 100,000 years, yet only in the past 100 years have we began to remove racism and sexism from our societies. To think the world was better at some other point in our history is either a result of ignorance or stupidity.
First you must define better. If this is your better more people die of ignorance everyday than in the known history of the planet. We have crossed the bridge of being able to fix the problems we have created.
Remove racism and sexism, you must live in some fantasy novel. Look at Africa and the middle east where people are slaughtered on a daily basis because of race and sex.
I do not know where you live but it cannot be planet earth.
Where does your 100,000 years come from? You must live in Rush Limbaugh land where if you say it then it must be true.
We have done more to destroy this planet in the last 100 years than make it a better place to live. Look at the world and look what we have destroyed.
Chas
GK you say "our world", when everyone knows you mean "Western Society". To think that everyone in Western Society is happier and more content than any other peoples who have lived in the past 100,000 years is what I call arrogant and ignorant.
As a previous poster stated, these people have chosen to remain isolated - why don't we show our evolved judgement and leave them alone? You know, treat them how they want to be treated?
Besides, no one said they were "better off", only that they were not interested in the affairs of other people outside their domain.
Man is THE evil species, PERIOD!
So they could document the documentation of the tribe. I think they should have had a third aircraft (as noisy and large as possible) to document the people who where documenting the people documenting the tribe. Hum, why aren't they being documented? Okay four aircraft, the fourth aircraft has two roles, it drops incendiary devices on the tribespeople to make sure that they are in fact real people and run from the fire, secondly it documents the aircraft that is documenting the aircraft that is documenting the aircraft that is documenting the tribespeople.
Of course, nobody cares that we're scaring the crap out of these poor souls...
I couldn't think of a greater gift to give these people than to tell them of the great salvation that is theirs by believing in Jesus of Nazareth. Don't give them religion. Just give them the wonderful news.
"And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come." - Jesus, Matthew 24:14
That "wonderful news" would be delivered in the form of illnesses they have never been exposed to and changes to their society that would probably end the tribe. I am not saying that those delivering the news would intend to end their world, but it certainly would. Perhaps, as the article suggests, they should be left alone.
TheBossIsOutToLunch proposes that "wonderful news" be given to them, as in;
"We have good news and we have bad news. The good news is that we have written orders from our god to save you. The bad news is that if you decline or refuse to be saved, we must kill you because it's also been written, though we only interpret it this way on special occasions".
TheBossIsIn, how likely would it be that you would go their religion if they tried to convince you?
Yes, the Spanish missionaries did a great job when they brought the Gospel to the Native Americans of the desert Southwest. What they forgot to tell them was that the Gospel came with smallpox which nearly wiped them out.
PuLEASSSE.
i like to live there ,,this way i can be there god (with all my knowledge)that they don,t have ,,,lol i can be god after all ..
could this all be a scam to control people. these could be actors out there. how come this is the only guy that has seen them?
What about the pictures taken from the Brazilian Indian Affair's Department? Would that be a hoax too?
Quite possibly, most of these photos are not new and the same hoax happens every 18 months like clockwork to bring attention to the indiginous people.
Mr Polar Bear would disagree with you !
I completely disagree with all these comments. They need medical assistance; schooling for the young and help with integration into the modern world. Sooner or later they will encounter armed villagers from outside who will not be so altruistic. Someone needs to organise a first contact team, including medical, social, linguistic specialists and others who can teach these people to protect themselves against outside exploitation, move them away from hunter gatherer to an agricultural and animal husbandry based society; Sure it's not going to be easy or all good; but ignorance will destroy them in the end. Keeping religion out of it would help, until they can make up their own minds about it.
That policy of trying to help the uncontacted people has never worked. Half of them will die from diseases within the first two years and the other half living in poverty, drug abuse, and prostitution. They know of the outside world, and they have made their own decision to not contact it. Respect their own decision as a self-governing people please.
They contacted the outside world when one of them shot an arrow into a man's heart.
Mark Davidson, Easy does it. The only man who knew how to speak their dialect died with one of their arrows in his heart.
The majority of comments are pathetic and the remaining provide some evidence that the world still has hope.
The majority of comments are pathetic and the remaining provide some evidence that the world still has hope.
Do they sell cigarettes and fireworks?
I've heard they have a special tobacco that is meant to be chewed and it'll be marketed in the redneck states. It'll be designed to taste so good that customers will not care if the insides of their mouths rot or blackens their teeth, that's if any remain. Oh I forgot, this chew is already available. I think it's called "Redmans Revenge" and its proving to be very, very lucrative!
Hmm, I wonder if there is a space-faring civilization out there debating whether to interfere with the uncontacted, semi-intelligent bipedal species living on that little blue planet, third from Sol . . .