One Of South America's Most Isolated Tribes Located And Photographed

[Tooj 17]

Isolated tribe spotted in Brazil

 

One of South America's few remaining uncontacted indigenous tribes has been spotted and photographed on the border between Brazil and Peru.

 

The Brazilian government says it took the images to prove the tribe exists and help protect its land.

 

The pictures, taken from an aeroplane, show red-painted tribe members brandishing bows and arrows.

 

More than half the world's 100 uncontacted tribes live in Brazil or Peru, Survival International says.

 

Stephen Corry, the director of the group - which supports tribal people around the world - said such tribes would "soon be made extinct" if their land was not protected.

 

Survival International said that although this particular group is increasing in number, others in the area are at risk from illegal logging.

 

The photos were taken during several flights over one of the most remote parts of the Amazon rainforest in Brazil's Acre region.

 

They show tribe members outside thatched huts, surrounded by the dense jungle, pointing bows and arrows up at the camera.

 

"We did the overflight to show their houses, to show they are there, to show they exist," the group quoted Jose Carlos dos Reis Meirelles Junior, an official in the Brazilian government's Indian affairs department, as saying.

 

"This is very important because there are some who doubt their existence."

 

He described the threats to such tribes and their land as "a monumental crime against the natural world" and "further testimony to the complete irrationality with which we, the 'civilised' ones, treat the world".

 

Disease is also a risk, as members of tribal groups that have been contacted in the past have died of illnesses that they have no defence against, ranging from chicken pox to the common cold.

 

 

[JawD 99]

Are they going to throw spears at the plane?

[Tooj 17]

Are they going to throw spears at the plane?

That's what I first thought.

 

Also what's with The Predator as well being in the 2nd photo?

[JawD 99]

Ssshhh they cant see him

[wykikitoon 20758]

Could do with a roof job

[manc-mag 1]

Looks like Hartlepool tbh.

[Tooj 17]

Looks like Hartlepool tbh.

Far too many "coloured" folk tbh.

[wykikitoon 20758]

Looks like Hartlepool tbh.

Far too many "coloured" folk tbh.

 

FFS lock this before Luke Sees it

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Happy Face 29]

A few of them look like they've borrowed tracky tops off 2J.

 

[sweetleftpeg 0]

They could all do with a good bath by the looks of it.

[wykikitoon 20758]

A few of them look like they've borrowed tracky tops off 2J.

 

 

:rolleyes:

[Jusoda Kid 1]

Should be locked up for carrying offensive weapons imo, have they not see the latest anti-knife campaign?

[manc-mag 1]

There's a couple of girls that orange in my office if the truth be told.

[Lazarus 0]

Bet it was rob w who spotted them

[manc-mag 1]

Bet it was rob w who spotted them

 

 

Out of the corner of his eye when he was serving breakfast in business class.

[Jimbo 175]

Bet it was rob w who spotted them

 

Rob would probably tell you that he had spent a year living with them surviving on berries and rain water.

[Lazarus 0]

Heres a pic from todays flyover

 

[Ayatollah Hermione 14059]

Looks like Shields Road in the picture above tbh.

[grasshopper 0]

Heres a pic from todays flyover

 

 

[Rob W 0]

Bet it was rob w who spotted them

 

Rob would probably tell you that he had spent a year living with them surviving on berries and rain water.

 

 

 

nivvor been to S America -

 

I have, of course, met primitive native peoples in West Irian (that's Indonesian New Guinea to you lot)

 

Seemed quite normal sort of people to be honest

[trophyshy 7084]

[Jimbo 175]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jun/2...;feed=worldnews

 

Secret of the 'lost' tribe that wasn't

 

Tribal guardian admits the Amazon Indians' existence was already known, but he hoped the publicity would lift the threat of logging

 

In pictures: the remote Amazonian tribe

Peter Beaumont, foreign affairs editor The Observer, Sunday June 22, 2008 Article history

Warriors from the Amazon basin tribe, above, paint their bodies red and fire arrows to ward off the plane carrying José Carlos Meirelles, who says that he released the picture in order to highlight the plight of indigenous people in the jungle

 

They are the amazing pictures that were beamed around the globe: a handful of warriors from an 'undiscovered tribe' in the rainforest on the Brazilian-Peruvian border brandishing bows and arrows at the aircraft that photographed them.

 

Or so the story was told and sold. But it has now emerged that, far from being unknown, the tribe's existence has been noted since 1910 and the mission to photograph them was undertaken in order to prove that 'uncontacted' tribes still existed in an area endangered by the menace of the logging industry.

 

The disclosures have been made by the man behind the pictures, José Carlos Meirelles, 61, one of the handful of sertanistas – experts on indigenous tribes – working for the Brazilian Indian Protection Agency, Funai, which is dedicated to searching out remote tribes and protecting them.

 

In his first interviews since the disclosure of the tribe's existence, Meirelles described how he found the group, detailed how they lived and how he planned the publicity to protect them and other tribes in similar danger of losing the habitat in which they have flourished for hundreds of years.

 

Meirelles admitted that the tribe was first known about almost a century ago and that the apparently chance encounter that produced the now famous images was no accident. 'When we think we might have found an isolated tribe,' he told al-Jazeera, 'a sertanista like me walks in the forest for two or three years to gather evidence and we mark it in our [global positioning system]. We then map the territory the Indians occupy and we draw that protected territory without making contact with them. And finally we set up a small outpost where we can monitor their protection.'

 

But in this case Meirelles appears, controversially, to have gone out to seek and find the uncontacted tribe in an area where it was known to be living.

 

According to his account, the Brazilian state of Acre offered him the use of an aircraft for three days. 'I had years of GPS co-ordinates,' he said. Meirelles had another clue to the tribe's precise location. 'A friend of mine sent me some Google Earth co-ordinates and maps that showed a strange clearing in the middle of the forest and asked me what that was,' he said. 'I saw the co-ordinates and realised that it was close to the area I had been exploring with my son – so I needed to fly over it.'

 

For two days, Meirelles says, he flew a 150km-radius route over the border region with Peru and saw huts that belonged to isolated tribes. But he did not see people. 'When the women hear the plane above, they run into the forest, thinking it's a big bird,' he said. 'This is such a remote area, planes don't fly over it.'

 

What he was looking for was not only proof of life, but firm evidence that the tribes in this area were flourishing – proof in his view that the policy of no contact and protection was working. On the last day, with only a couple hours of flight time remaining, Meirelles spotted a large community.

 

'When I saw them painted red, I was satisfied, I was happy,' he said. 'Because painted red means they are ready for war, which to me says they are happy and healthy defending their territory.'

 

Survival International, the organisation that released the pictures along with Funai, conceded yesterday that Funai had known about this nomadic tribe for around two decades. It defended the disturbance of the tribe saying that, since the images had been released, it had forced neighbouring Peru to re-examine its logging policy in the border area where the tribe lives, as a result of the international media attention. Activist and former Funai president Sydney Possuelo agreed that – amid threats to their environment and doubt over the existence of such tribes – it was necessary to publish them.

 

But the revelation that the existence of the tribe was already established will provoke awkward questions over why a decision was made to try to photograph them – a form of contact in itself – in order to make a political point.

 

Meirelles, one of only five or so genuine sertanistas, has no regrets, arguing that the pictures and video released to the world were powerful and indisputable evidence to those who say isolated tribes no longer exist. 'Alan García [the President of Peru] declared recently that the isolated Indians were a creation in the imagination of environmentalists and anthropologists – now we have the pictures.'

 

But he is determined to keep the tribe's location secret – even under torture, he says. 'They can decide when they want contact, not me or anyone else.