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Is It Ethical to Leave Uncontacted Tribes Alone?By JEFFREY KLUGER June 4, 2015It’s not entirely fair to say that a single hug killed 4,500 people, but it’s not entirely wrong either. The hug happened in August of 1910, when an effort by a Brazilian military engineer to lure members of the isolated Nambikwara tribe out of the Amazon bush at last produced results. The engineer had spent the previous 14 months stocking a so-called attraction front—a small outpost that included a fruit and vegetable garden and tools that the Nambikwara were welcome to take.Finally, the chief of the tribe and six companions showed themselves. The man from the outside world embraced the man from the forest world, and somewhere in that moment, pathogens were surely passed. Three generations later, the tribe that had initially numbered about 5,000 was down to just 550 people—many of them killed by influenza, whooping cough and even the simple cold, diseases they had never encountered and against which they had no immunity.The death of the Nambikwara has long been a cautionary tale about how best to address the matter of indigenous and isolated tribes, but it’s a tale from which anthropologists, national governments and the medical community have not always taken the same lessons. That’s a problem.Even as forestland is shaved away by loggers and developers, and as cities and settlements encroach on the wild, an estimated 8,000 indigenous people in multiple small bands make their homes in the Peruvian Amazon. Similarly isolated groups live in the Brazilian Amazon, the mountains of New Guinea and on the Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean.All of those tribes have long raised the same questions: Is it ethical to mess with civilizations that have gotten on fine without help for thousands of years?Part of what’s given the matter greater urgency, as laid out in a striking pair of stories in the journal Science by contributing correspondents Andrew Lawler and Heather Pringle, is the recent, curious behavior of the tribes-people themselves. Increasingly, they’ve been emerging from the Amazon and either raiding settled villages or—for reasons that aren’t clear—simply vandalizing them. Last October, when villagers living along the banks of Peru’s Curanja River left their homes to vote in regional elections, they returned to find food, pots, pans, utensils, hammocks and more stolen. The villagers were tolerant—even understanding.“Some of them are only a couple generations removed from the forest themselves,” says Lawler, who journeyed extensively down the Curanja for his research. “They consider the tribes their first cousins and call their behavior ‘harvesting,’ not stealing.”But other behavior is harder for them to abide. In 2013, armed members of the Mashco Piro tribe raided another village, this time mostly to smash windows, kill dogs and chickens and destroy clothes. Other tribespeople have been reported attempting to lure village people into the forest with them. “Perhaps they’re trying to increase their numbers,” says Lawler. “They need a certain number of people to be viable.”Fear is driving some of them out as well—though in these cases they present themselves openly and seek help. Drug runners throughout Peru and Brazil think nothing of killing tribal people who get in their way, and the smaller the forest footprint gets, the more the two groups bump into each other. But leaving the forest can be as deadly as staying there.Indigenous contact with Europeans began in 1492 and has, over the centuries, taken a massive toll, with up to 100 million deaths resulting from imported diseases. That lesson had to be learned again in the 1980s and 1990s, when official government policy was to lure the tribes out, to, as Lawler puts it, “get them to settle down and become good, contemporary people.” But infections and deaths again resulted.The broadly accepted solution—a sensible one—is to make some modern goods available at attraction fronts, but only very limited ones. Pots, pans and tools can be both harmless and helpful. Flashlights, on the other hand, which can be awfully convenient in the wild, also contain toxins in their batteries and are broadly disruptive for cultures that have long since developed ways to deal with day-night cycles.Goods that go from body to body should be entirely off-limits. Lawler spoke to Peruvian villager Marcel Pinedo Cecilio, 69, who was born in the forest but later emerged. Cecilio recalls his first contact with an outsider—thought to have been an ethnographer and photographer—who left the villagers with a gift of a fishbone necklace. Shortly thereafter, much of the tribe came down with a sore throat and fever and 200 of them died. In the 1980s, up to 400 Peruvian villagers died from passing contact with crews of Shell oil company workers.Routine care of illnesses and treatment of injuries could be a boon, though for safety’s sake they would best be delivered by select groups of well-vaccinated field workers staffing small care stations. The workers could also offer vaccines against the most common illnesses that strike the tribes—typically respiratory diseases—to protect them against chance encounters in the future. Tribes are also unusually susceptible to eye infections.But the sensible solutions are not easy to implement. This year, funding for FUNAI, the Brazilian federal agency that is responsible for indigenous peoples, was only 2.77 reals ($1.15 million), which was just 15% of what the agency requested, according to Pringle. Last year, FUNAI reported that it need 30 frontier outposts to do its work, but it was able to support just 15.Official obtuseness is another part of the problem. In 2007, then-Peruvian President Alan García denied that uncontacted tribes-people exist at all, claiming that they are a fabrication of environmentalists bent on halting oil and gas exploration, reports Lawler. The head of the state-owned oil company echoed García, declaring it “absurd to say there are uncontacted people.” His argument: no one has seen them—which is pretty much what “uncontacted” is supposed to mean.Nobody pretends there are easy ethical, medical or cultural answers to the problems, but nobody pretends things can go on the way they have either. When a population has crashed from many millions to several thousand, it’s clear which way the trend lines are pointing. The disappearance of uncontacted tribes may mean that policymakers can at last stop worrying about them—but it will also mean that the rest of humanity will have to begin mourning them.Last Survivor of Uncontacted Tribe, 'Man of the Hole,' Is Spotted in the AmazonBy?Megan Gannon, Live Science Contributor?|?July 20, 2018 12:51pm ET-33813816383000Here, the "Last of his Tribe's" house and garden, where the man grows manioc and other vegetables, according to Survival International.An isolated man believed to be the only surviving member of his tribe has been spotted in the Brazilian Amazon. FUNAI, Brazil's indigenous affairs department, which monitors uncontacted people, released?video footage?this week of the man, nicknamed "the Man of the Hole," chopping trees with an ax in the state of Rond?nia.To protect him from external threats, FUNAI said it has been keeping tabs on the man from a distance for the last 22 years.?The agency said that in the 1980s, farmers, illegal loggers and land-grabbers encroached on the territory of isolated tribes in Rond?nia, and many indigenous people were expelled from their lands or killed. During an attack in 1995, the remaining members of the Man of the Hole's already small tribe were killed, possibly by cattle ranchers."We don't know the name of his tribe or what language he speaks," the indigenous rights group Survival International said in a?Facebook post about the video. "His people were probably massacred by cattle ranchers who invaded the region. He survives because his territory is now, finally, being properly protected by the authorities."457708055689500The man lives in the forests of the Tanaru indigenous reserve, which was established in 2015. After confirming his location in 1996, FUNAI had tried to contact the man, but he has always resisted. (He has previously?shot arrows?at FUNAI workers who got too close.) Coordinators with the agency stopped making attempts at contact in 2005. Instead, they watch him from afar, and sometimes leave tools and seeds for planting in areas that he passes.The man got his nickname from the huge holes he has dug in the forest, either for trapping animals or hiding. The "Man of the Hole" digs deep holes to trap animals and to hide in; he is thought to be the last survivor of his tribe, whose members were massacred.According to?Survival International, Brazil is home to the world's largest population of uncontacted people, and 80 of these tribes are thought to live in the Amazon, subsisting through a mixture of hunting, gathering and fishing. Their lands and livelihoods are under threat from encroaching industry and development. Besides the?risk of violence?from contact with outsiders, these indigenous communities are especially vulnerable to diseases like measles and?the flu, to which they have no immunity.Groups like FUNAI and Survival International typically publish photos and videos of uncontacted people to?prove the existence of these tribes, which is sometimes denied by loggers and others who wish to develop the forest reserves.'Human Safaris' May Be Exploiting Isolated Tribes, Advocates WarnBy?Megan Gannon, News Editor?|?August 29, 2014 02:03pm ET-5080393700Unscrupulous tour operators in the Amazon basin may be leading travelers alarmingly close to the territories of "uncontacted" people, according to tribal rights groups.Advocates are particularly concerned about a spate of recent encounters with the? HYPERLINK "" Mashco-Piro people, a group that lives in voluntary isolation in Peru's densely forested Madre de Dios region, near the border with Brazil.Representatives with Peru's Native Federation of the Madre de Dios River and Tributaries, or FENAMAD,?issued a statement?this week voicing their alarm about reports of tourists filming and photographing Mashco-Piro people and leaving items like clothing on the riverbanks for the tribe."It's high time the Peruvian government put words into action instead of these endless meetings about devising protocols and policies," FENAMAD?President Klaus Quicque said in the statement.Every few months, campaigners at the advocacy group?Survival International?get emails from tourists who just got back from a trip to Peru and are eager to share photos they took of the Mashco-Piro."It's been happening with more and more frequency," Rebecca Spooner, Survival International's Peru campaigner, told Live Science. Spooner said the travelers are usually well-intentioned, but she has to explain to them that her organization only?publishes photos of uncontacted people?for very specific reasons — namely, to prove the existence of tribal people, which is sometimes denied by parties, such as logging companies, with a vested interest in?developing the region.Survival International began investigating the issue of possible "human safaris" along the Madre de Dios River two years ago. Representatives of the organization posed as tourists and called several tour operators working in Peru, asking what kind of opportunities they would have for traveling into Mashco-Piro territory if they booked a trip. The activists found that many of these guides actually promoted Mashco-Piro sightings as part of their tour packages, Spooner said. Similar situations have played out in other parts of the world. The Jarawa people living in India's Andaman Islands have become a tourist attraction, despite campaigns to close the main road that goes through the territory of the voluntarily isolated tribe.It's not just a matter of exploitation; tribal people could become fatally ill from diseases like the flu if they came into contact with outsiders."This is obviously really worrying, because the Mashco-Piro are an uncontacted tribe and are extremely vulnerable," Spooner said. "They don't have resistance to common diseases.""Uncontacted" is a bit of a misnomer, though. Most of the peoples who are considered uncontacted are aware of the outside world, and some maintain ties with nearby tribes, but they choose to live in relative isolation.The presence of the Mashco-Piro people has been recorded since the 1970s, and they've long resisted contact with missionaries and other visitors. But in another alarming trend, the Mashco-Piro people have been coming out onto the riverbanks more and more frequently, and advocates aren't sure why, Spooner said.The recent?emergence of another nearby tribe?indicates that uncontacted people may be facing pressure from illegal logging and drug traffickers in the region. Earlier this summer, a group of people who spoke a Panoan language and said they lived near the source of the Envira River in Peru made contact with a settlement in Brazil. Through a translator, the tribespeople told of violent attacks they experienced at the hands of outsiders in their home territory.Survival International and FENAMAD have called on the Peruvian government to better equip guard posts to protect the Mashco-Piro from outsiders intruding on the tribe's land. Peru should also prevent tour operators from stopping their boats when the Indians appear and forbid tourists from taking pictures or leaving gifts, the organizations say.Spooner added that the?Madre de Dios?Reserve, which has been set aside for indigenous tribes, was originally proposed to cover about 7,700 square miles (20,000 square kilometers), but it actually covers only about 3,000 square miles (7,770 square kilometers) today. Survival International and FENAMAD have asked for Peru to expand this protected area. The groups also called for an official contingency plan in cases of contact, as well as measures to prevent unwanted contact.? ................
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