On Friday, Brazzil magazine published a piece about the Brazilian court judgement on the Raposa Serra do Sol indigenous lands, due this week. Under threat from rice farmers, the Indians of Raposa-Serra do Sol have suffered violent attacks such as the one in this video. On Thursday 27 August, Brazil’s Supreme Court will decide whether the demarcation of the indigenous area stands, in a ruling that could affect tribal lands throughout the Amazon. The Guardian (UK) also reported on the pending court ruling.

The BBC’s Crossing Continents reported on Mayan protests over Canadian mining giant Goldcorp’s planned mine in Guatemala.

“After I spoke at [Goldcorp’s annual shareholder’s meeting],” Mayan activist Mario Tema says, “a shareholder approached me and he told me ‘I don’t care about your cause, all I care about is the money in my pocket.’”

Last week, The Scotsman revealed that Edinburgh-based investment company Martin Currie has sold its shares in London-based mining company Vedanta Resources after concern about its plans to mine the Dongria Kondh’s sacred Niyamgiri mountain in India. The paper then asked ‘So, what misery does your pension pay for?’ Unsurprisingly, the Dongria Kondh got another mention.

Indyblogs’ Andrew Buncombe covered the ongoing struggle against Vedanta and says:

It’s heartening to know that the people who promised to continue their campaign whatever the Supreme Court ruled were not making empty promises.

And finally… we heard that this year’s Fell Edge Fest, an ‘end of summer celebration combining workshops of all shapes and sizes and an eclectic mix of bands and DJs to party the night away’ will be held in aid of Survival. It’s to be held somewhere in the Yorkshire Dales, 12-14 September. More via Facebook or on the Fell Edge Fest site.

I had mixed feelings when I learned last week that Laura, the co-ordinator of our Berlin office, is leaving Survival.

Mixed because we’re all excited for Laura, of course - but sad that someone’s leaving who it’s been such a pleasure working with and who has steered our German office through so many changes and brought it so much further forward.

I asked Laura to write a few words about her experiences working for Survival, and here they are. If you’re interested in joining Survival as our new Berlin office co-ordinator, take a look at the job advert in English or in German. But hurry - recruitment closes on 27 August.

Working for Survival Deutschland was both a challenge and a real pleasure. Challenging because I had the daunting task of promoting indigenous peoples’ rights in Germany, but also a great pleasure, as I could be creative about ways of spreading our message: that tribal peoples are out there, that they are neither ‘primitive’ nor in need of ‘progress’, and that where their land rights are recognised, their communities thrive.

The office is situated in the House of Democracy and Human Rights, which offers great networking opportunities and facilities for meetings and events. I also had great support from several volunteers and interns, who contributed a great deal of their time to Survival and helped in many different ways.

During my time at Survival, I set up a press database, liaised with journalists, contacted shops and festivals to display our flyers, participated in events with our stalls and kept our growing supporter base informed about the latest news on tribal peoples, amongst other things.

Once a year, I also met up for a week in London with my colleagues from the other offices in Paris, Milan, Madrid, Amsterdam and London - and whilst during the year we communicated by phone or email, the personal meetings gave me an important source of support.

One of the highlights of my time with Survival was when Davi Kopenawa, a shaman and leader of the Yanomami Indians from the Amazon, came to visit Berlin. I had the pleasure of organising his meetings with press, politicians and foundations. Meeting him will always remain one of my fondest memories.

I will never stop promoting the rights of indigenous peoples in this world. My personal situation calls for a change now, but my devotion to the goals of Survival will last forever.

  

The spectacular island of Vorovoro, Fiji,
is Tribewanted’s physical home

Some years ago, in the South Pacific Ocean, a new kind of tribe came to life. Hailing from every stretch of the planet, Tribewanted was formed as a travellers’ community to bring novel ways of living ethically to the Fijian isle of Vorovoro and to their own lives.

They make decisions collectively as a web-based social network but with a very physical, island life too. They invite new tribe members to join them online and on island to experience their unique lifestyle.

Tribewanted are now asking those who sign up for a slice of island life to also join Survival. We’re excited that visitors to Vorovoro will have a chance to help tribal peoples the world over in their struggle for their lands and human rights.

Tribewanted was the creation of Ben Keene and Mark Bowness who wanted to make an eco-village of visiting travellers living and working with local Fijians.

They have championed their model of sustainable living with the fascinating internet dimension that keeps the tribe alive and together long after visiting tribe members leave the island.

It’s been so successful that, in January this year, it became the subject of a BBC series tracking the ups and downs of this visionary project.

It continues to blossom as a vibrant social network beating MySpace as Best Social Network at London’s Broadcast Digital Media Awards. Tribewanted, in its many forms, awaits you.

As British mining company Vedanta Resources ploughs ahead with plans to open a massive new mine on tribal land, we invite you to protest outside the firm’s Annual General Meeting (AGM) next week.

Vedanta (through a subsidiary named Sterlite) intends to build a huge bauxite mine in Niyamgiri, Orissa. The Niyamgiri Hills are the home of the Dongria Kondh tribe.

If the mine goes ahead it will destroy the Dongria Kondh and desecrate their most sacred site. Mining in this location risks polluting and drying up the many streams and rivers that flow from the mountain, which thousands of families depend on.

The battle to save Niyamgiri is currently being fought in the Supreme Court in Delhi. Although the company does not yet have permission for the mine, they have built a refinery which has already displaced some of a neighbouring Kondh tribe from their villages.

The Dongria have vowed to protect their forests and mountain. Two spokesmen from the area are traveling to London to protest at the AGM.

The Dongria Kondh need your help. Please join us on Thursday.

To Mr. Mereilles, a government official in charge of monitoring isolated Indians on Brazil’s western frontier, The Observer article must have been even more of a shock than the astounding photographs themselves. In it, he is wrongly alleged to have misled the world. His letter of correction is below, including the sections, in red, that the Observer chose to leave out in publication.

Dear Editor,

Your article (”Secret of the ‘lost’ tribe that wasn’t”, June 22) completely distorts the work I have been doing on behalf of the Brazilian government for the last two decades, to defend the isolated Indian groups of Acre state, Brazil.

I find it very surprising that you did not talk to me before publishing an inaccurate article that suggests I misled people about the uncontacted tribe whose photos were published around the world.

I have not ‘admitted’ that the tribe was known about before we took the photos of them. I have always made that perfectly clear. The statement we released together with the photos contains a statement from me that ‘In this region there are four distinct isolated tribes, that we have monitored for twenty years’.

Your writer is confusing ‘uncontacted’ ‹ that is, no contact with outside society ‹ with ‘undiscovered’. No-one who works in this field would ever describe the many isolated tribes in the Amazon as ’undiscovered’, as we have a good idea where most of them are. But that does not mean that we make contact with them - quite the contrary, we are monitoring their territory to make sure no outsiders can enter.

Your article, by suggesting there was something dishonest about the photos, has made our job harder, and will be used by the Indians’ many enemies.

Yours sincerely,

José Carlos dos Reyes Meirelles Jr,
FUNAI Coordinator of the Ethno-environmental protection zone, Envira River, Acre, Brazil

The damage that this article has done is difficult to measure, yet we can be sure that it has set back the fight for tribal peoples’ rights. It sits proudly at the summit of journalistic irresponsibility.

Despite this, The Observer maintains the original article, without any corrections, on its website, acting as a reference to anyone hoping to ‘prove’ that the uncontacted tribe photographed from the air in early 2008, wasn’t.

The threat of ‘copy and pasting’ doesn’t sound like the most pressing concern for tribal people – not compared to mega-dams, gold-mining, illegal loggers and racism, anyway.

But what if it’s false or damaging information that’s being copied and pasted?

That’s precisely what happened recently after a misleading article by Peter Beaumont in The Observer about the recently published photos of an uncontacted tribe in Brazil near the Peruvian border.

Newspapers and radio stations worldwide started reporting the photos as a ‘farce’, ‘fraud’, ‘fake’ and ‘hoax.’ Nothing could be further from the truth.

The fallout from the Beaumont article has been chronicled by well-known Brazilian journalist, Altino Machado. Machado is from Acre, the remote Brazilian state where the photographed tribe lives, and has worked for some of Brazil’s major newspapers.

‘Peter Beaumont copied what he had read and drew conclusions about an issue he doesn’t know anything about,’ Machado writes in an article for Terra Magazine, a Brazilian publication, noting in passing that Beaumont is a ‘specialist on the Middle East.’

But worse, Machado writes, was still to come. Beaumont’s article was read by journalists all around the world and, after a lot more copying and pasting, newspapers, radio stations and blogs published or broadcast stories based on it, without checking their facts.

Machado remarks that this ‘disinformation’ and the media’s ‘traps’ would have been welcome news to the Peruvian government and the loggers who are invading uncontacted tribes’ territory in Peru.

And why wouldn’t it? The spread of such ‘disinformation’ makes it only more difficult to have the uncontacted tribes’ existence recognised and their land effectively protected from the loggers by the government. On top of that, it undermines the work of Survival and many other organisations pushing to make that a reality.

Read Machado’s article in Spanish and in Portuguese. 

  Julie Christie at a Survival demonstration

Last year Survival asked me to narrate a short film about the plight of uncontacted peoples living in some of the most remote parts of the world. I’ve long been a supporter, and thought this would be one way that I could make a valuable and lasting contribution.

I was unprepared for just how deeply moved I would be by the footage Survival had put together, and the intimate stories of these vulnerable peoples struggling to survive. Amongst the remarkable scenes filmed by Survival researchers, one above all has stayed with me. A pitiful group of just six individuals, the last survivors of a once-proud tribe called the Akuntsu, sit forlornly in a forest clearing.

Having witnessed the massacre of all the other members of their tribe by cattle ranchers desperate for their land, their lethargy and utter despondency is hardly surprising. Yet still they rouse themselves to perform a shuffling dance of welcome. Heartbreaking.

Words seem woefully inadequate to convey their despair; but this short piece of film strikes at the heart of their story, helps us to understand and moves us to act. Survival is appealing for support to create a film unit, to ensure scenes like this reach many more people.

This need not be overly expensive; Survival researchers gather a wealth of video footage when visiting tribal communities, but it takes time and resources to edit, produce and distribute a film like Uncontacted Tribes.

Already this film has generated worldwide interest. For example, a newspaper in India recently gave one of our DVDs to all its readers. This has been one of many fantastic opportunities to get our message across using film, but of course there are cost implications.

With more resources, Survival could produce numerous films showing the reality of life for many of the world’s tribes; the deforestation of their homes, the sickness and disease they suffer as a result of invasions of their land, but also their dignity and endurance.

Survival’s goal is to get more people to see and understand more about tribal peoples. Such a groundswell of support will make it impossible for governments to sweep tribes aside and deny them what is rightfully theirs.

Tragically, it is too late for the Akuntsu; there simply is no way back for such a tiny group of survivors. But for every story like theirs, there are others – because of you – that are more encouraging.

Next year will be Survival’s 40th anniversary. I have been a supporter for most of that time and have seen just how many peoples Survival has helped. In the 1980s, the Yanomami were facing a bleak future, following invasions of their land by goldminers.

In fact more than a fifth of the tribe were wiped out. Decades of campaigning by Survival resulted in an historic victory, with almost 10 million hectares of rainforest secured for the tribe. In the words of Davi Kopenawa, Yanomami leader and shaman, ‘Without Survival, we’d all be dead’.

I’m proud to have been a part of the Uncontacted Tribes project, and I hope this film – and those that follow – will help make the world more aware, and help to secure the future of tribal peoples for generations to come.

Following the success of Bruce Parry’s ‘Tribe‘ series, the BBC is back with another anthropological style series: ‘Tribal Wives’. This time British women from a variety of backgrounds are sent to live with different tribes to experience the life of tribal women, including the Kuna in Panama, Waorani in Ecuador, Afar in Ethiopia, and Himba in Namibia.

The programme is an interesting insight into tribal life, but mainly focuses on the British women themselves, rather than highlighting the problems that tribal peoples are facing.

Survival works with both the Waorani and the Himba who face real threats: the Waorani from oil exploration and logging, and the Himba from a proposed dam which will flood their lands. The programmes are on BBC 2 at 9pm on the following dates:

Episode 1: 18 June - Kuna in Panama
Episode 2: 25 June - Waorani in Ecuador
Episode 3: 2 July - Afar in Ethiopia
Episode 4: 9 July - Himba in Namibia

Further info at: www.tribalwives.com

The British newspaper The Observer claimed this weekend that it’s now ‘emerged’ that the uncontacted tribe whose photos went around the world were neither ‘lost’, nor ‘undiscovered’ nor ‘unknown’.

This is a classic example of journalists getting the wrong end of the stick. The only people who ever claimed that the Indians photographed were ‘lost’ or ‘undiscovered’ were…. the press, despite the fact that Survival has been campaigning for the protection of the many isolated Indian tribes on the Peru-Brazil border for more than twenty years.

Indeed, you might have thought that the fact that the Indians are living in a government reserve set aside for isolated Indian groups would tend to indicate that they weren’t exactly ‘unknown’.

For the avoidance of doubt, let’s just make it clear – yes, the tribe is uncontacted, that is to say, has no peaceful contact with outsiders. But no, they’re not ‘lost’ – they know where they are, and anthropologists, Survival, other NGOs and the Brazilian government have known that there are many isolated Indian tribes living in that region for decades.

What is undoubtedly true is that many people, not least the President of Peru, had publicly questioned whether there were any uncontacted Indians there at all, which is why the fact that Peru’s government has now been pushed into sending a team to investigate is such welcome news.

I guess we should be used by now to the fact that quite a few journalists are incapable of writing on this subject without resorting to stereotypes about ‘lost’ tribes, but one might have hoped that The Observer would know better.

Tribal land could enjoy greater protection
under international law. © Survival

The Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization, UNPO, has launched a campaign for countries to ratify the only international law for tribal peoples.

International Labour Organisation Convention 169, or ILO 169, recognises tribal peoples’ land ownership rights and says they should be consulted about projects that affect them. Unlike UN Declarations, it is legally binding. The more countries that ratify the Convention, the more force it will have.

Survival’s own campaign for ILO 169 is also gaining momentum; so far, 119 MPs have signed an Early Day Motion calling on the UK government to ratify the Convention.

At the moment the UK refuses to sign up to the law, saying that it has nothing to do with this country. But they are wrong – if the UK were to ratify ILO 169, it would be a major step forward in recognising and protecting tribal peoples’ rights everywhere.

Find out if your MP has signed the Early Day Motion. If they haven’t, write to them today!