At risk of extinction from disease and land loss
In the depths of the Amazon rainforest in Brazil live tribes who have no contact with the outside world.
Illegal loggers and cattle ranchers are invading their land and bringing disease. They won’t survive unless this stops.
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| The photos reveal a thriving, healthy community with baskets full of manioc and papaya fresh from their gardens. © Gleison Miranda/FUNAI/Survival |
Brazil’s Amazon is home to more uncontacted tribes than anywhere in the world. There could be up to 70 isolated groups in this rainforest, according to the government’s Indian affairs department FUNAI.
Their decision not to maintain contact with other tribes and outsiders is almost certainly a result of previous disastrous encounters and the ongoing invasion and destruction of their forest home.
For example, the uncontacted groups living in the state of Acre are probably survivors of the rubber boom, when many Indians were enslaved.
It is likely that the survivors escaped by fleeing up the rivers. Memories of the atrocities against their ancestors may still be strong.
Very little is known about these peoples. What we do know is that they wish to remain uncontacted: they have shot arrows at outsiders and airplanes, or they simply avoid contact by hiding deep in the forest.
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| Uncontacted Indians in Brazil appear defensive from the air. This photo was taken in 2008. © Gleison Miranda/FUNAI |
Some, like the Awá, are nomadic hunter gatherers constantly on the move, able to build a home within hours and abandon it days later.
Others are more settled, living in communal houses and planting manioc and other crops in forest clearings as well as hunting and fishing.
In Acre there could be as many as 600 Indians belonging to four different groups. Here they live in relative tranquility in several demarcated territories which are largely untouched.
Perhaps 300 uncontacted Indians live in the Massacó territory in Rondônia.
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| Uncontacted Indians in Brazil, May 2008. Many are under increasing threat from illegal logging over the border in Peru. © GLEISON MIRANDA/FUNAI |
They use enormous bows and arrows – one bow was found measuring over four metres – very similar in size and design to the Sirionó tribe live in neighbouring Bolivia.
They clearly like to eat tortoises as mounds of shells have been found in abandoned camps.
However, other uncontacted groups are teetering on the edge of extinction with no more than a handful of individuals left.
These tiny fragmented groups living mainly in Rondônia, Mato Grosso and Maranhão states are the survivors of brutal land grabs when they were targeted and murdered by loggers, ranchers, and others.
Today they are still deliberately hunted down and their forests homes are being rapidly destroyed.
Mega dam and road building projects, part of the government’s ‘accelerated growth programme’, pose huge threats.
The Jirau and Santo Antonio dams being built on the Madeira river are very near to several groups of uncontacted Indians.
A recent report says that some of them are abandoning their land due to the noise and pollution from the construction sites.
All are extremely vulnerable to diseases like flu or the common cold transmitted by outsiders and to which they have no resistance: good reasons to avoid contact.
Even in this grim scenario, some remarkable stories of survival have emerged. Karapiru an Awá man survived an attack by gunmen and lived on his own for ten years hiding in the forest until he finally made contact with some colonists and now lives with other Awá.
The uncontacted peoples of Brazil must be protected and their land rights recognised before they, along with the forests they depend on, vanish forever.
Your support is vital if the Uncontacted Indians of Brazil are to survive. There are many ways you can help.
