More isolated tribes being found in world’s last wildernesses
First just one came out, then two, then three, four, five, six, seven, but there were more than that in total. We had a dozen machetes, a dozen knives and some axes and pots with us. We gave these to them. Not by hand, but by leaving them on the beach. We said to them, “Come closer” but they didn’t want to. They said to us, “Go further back, further back,’ so we did.”
The encounter between Jose, a Peruvian from the Las Piedras river area near the border with Brazil, and members of the large isolated Mashco-Piro tribe living in the deep Amazonian rainforest, took place this year and was described to the anthropologist Richard Hill, of Survival, the international campaign for tribal peoples. Following a series of similar encounters and incidents, such as one this week when a Peruvian government team photographed a group of 21 Indians from the air, Mr. Hill and other anthropologists are reassessing how many tribes there may be left who have chosen to shun the 21st century.
“Only 30 or so years ago, it was believed there were just 12,” said Stephen Corry, the director of Survival. “Now we think there are 107 living in isolation. As more and more incursions are made into the forest, more and more groups are being found. The more people look, the more are being found,” he said.
Some tribes who shun contact have a fair idea of life outside the forest, according to Mr. Corry, and may have machetes which they could have acquired from contact with other groups.
“Others may have had contact with outsiders generations ago, before they retreated deeper into forests because of incursions by westerners. Others may have no idea of country, other languages, or money, and no one has got close to them”.
This year the Brazilian government increased its estimate of the number of isolated tribes in its part of the Amazon from 40 to 67.
But it acknowledged some were reduced to a few individuals. One tribe is believed to be down to one man, known as the Man of the Hole, who digs holes in the forest to catch animals and fires arrows at anyone who comes near.
There is another large group of un contacted tribes in eastern Peru, where the government has licensed 70 per cent of the forest to oil and logging companies. These companies are coming into close contact with groups that were suspected but not encountered. Peruvian officials have tried to deny their presence, but the evidence is now incontrovertible.
“We think there are 15 groups,” said Mr. Hill. “Many are the descendants of tribes contacted over 100 years ago, during the rubber boom, who fled the prospect of enslavement and decimation by new diseases.”
The other concentration of groups is in West Papua, where vast areas of forest and mountain have been barely explored and access is particularly difficult because of the Indonesian military. Little research has been done, but occasional sightings of tribes by missionaries in aeroplanes suggest there could be as many as 40. “Others may have had contact with outsiders generations ago, before they retreated deeper into forests because of incursions by westerners. Others may have no idea of country, other languages, or money, and no one has got close to them”.
This year the Brazilian government increased its estimate of the number of isolated tribes in its part of the Amazon from 40 to 67.
But it acknowledged some were reduced to a few individuals. One tribe is believed to be down to one man, known as the Man of the Hole, who digs holes in the forest to catch animals and fires arrows at anyone who comes near.
There is another large group of un contacted tribes in eastern Peru, where the government has licensed 70 per cent of the forest to oil and logging companies. These companies are coming into close contact with groups that were suspected but not encountered. Peruvian officials have tried to deny their presence, but the evidence is now incontrovertible.
“We think there are 15 groups,” said Mr. Hill. “Many are the descendants of tribes contacted over 100 years ago, during the rubber boom, who fled the prospect of enslavement and decimation by new diseases.”
Elsewhere, there are three known isolated groups in the Andaman islands of India, five in Bolivia, possibly one or two in Colombia and Suriname, one in Paraguay, and maybe one or two bushmen groups in southern Africa. —
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07 Octobre 2007 à 10:26 dans
- English
