While gathering food along a river in a remote stretch of Brazil鈥檚 vast Amazon region, members of an uncontacted tribe ran into gold prospectors. The prospectors reportedly killed 10 of them and, after drinking in a bar, bragged about it.
International outrage followed, and federal prosecutors opened an investigation after a complaint was lodged by FUNAI, the Brazilian government agency on indigenous affairs.
As well as anger, this has inevitably raised the perennial question of whether uncontacted tribes should be left alone or .
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Although it鈥檚 hard to know exactly how many such groups are at risk, there are thought to be more than 100 around the world, mostly in forests in Central Africa, South America and New Guinea. Earlier sightings and signs of dwellings spotted from the air offer clues. Over the past couple of years, several such peoples have been documented for the first time in South America.
Uncontacted peoples still have a strong relationship to the land they live on. For many, the mountains, rivers and forests are alive. But pressure is growing. Outsiders often for timber, mining, dams, road-building, ranching and settlement.
Resulting contact often leads to violence. In 2014, the of Brazil came out of the forest after outsiders, possibly illegal loggers, massacred many of their elderly. According to Survival International, a charity that campaigns for the rights of indigenous peoples, the number of people killed was so high that the tribe couldn鈥檛 bury them all.
Violence is not the only threat. Common diseases such as influenza and measles, to which the uncontacted have little or no immunity, .
Freedom of choice
Some think that these peoples should be brought into the modern world to safeguard them. Proponents say this would allow them to reap the benefits of modern medicine and other protections.
It sounds tempting, but it鈥檚 not the best answer. The reality is that the future offered among the settler society often turns out to be on the lowest rung of the ladder, sometimes as beggars or prostitutes. History shows that tribal peoples end up in a far worse state after contact. Many , or both.
That鈥檚 why the choice of making contact with the outside world and the speed at which a culture adapts to modernity should be entirely in the hands of these communities, many of which are well aware of the existence of modern society.
Whether a tribe emerges from the 鈥渂ush鈥� is about self-determination. The only way to enable that choice to be theirs is to ramp up protection of tribal land, that effort, and meet the spirit of the 2007 UN declaration on indigenous rights on self-determination, which makes clear such areas should be safeguarded.
There is another upside to this approach. These peoples have a lot to teach modernity about different ways of living and thinking. Researchers have demonstrated that they can be , and tribal areas are said to be the best barrier to deforestation.
The outside world should help protect without interfering in a unique way of life. If tribes choose to make contact with wider society, they will find a way. But the choice must be theirs, not ours.
