They then built a mission station only several days’ walk from the Indians’ villages. Between 19 the missionaries flew over the Zo’é’s villages dropping gifts. Members of the New Tribes Mission, a fundamentalist missionary organisation based in the US, carried out a clandestine mission to make contact with the Zo’é of Brazil to convert them to Christianity. The missionaries called, ‘Come out! Come out!’ When I heard the motor-boat’s engine running, I said to myself, ‘What’s happening? A motor-boat! People are coming!’ When we saw them, we went and hid deeper in the undergrowth. The man, known as Hipa, told a Survival researcher about first contact: ‘I was eating peanuts when I heard the missionaries coming in a motor-boat. They succeeded in making contact with four people: one man and three women. In Peru, just a few years ago, evangelical Protestant missionaries built a village in one of the remotest parts of the Peruvian Amazon with the aim of making contact with an uncontacted tribe living in that region. Often believing that the tribes are ‘primitive’ and living pitiful lives ‘in the dark’, the missionaries’ ultimate aim is to convert them to Christianity – at whatever cost to the tribal peoples’ own health and wishes. Half of my people died.’ MissionariesĬhristian missionaries, who have been making first contact with tribes for five hundred years, are still trying to do so today. One of the Murunahua survivors, Jorge, who lost an eye during first contact, told a Survival researcher, ‘The disease came when the loggers made contact with us, although we didn’t know what a cold was then. In Peru, more than 50% of the previously-uncontacted Nahua tribe were wiped out following oil exploration on their land in the early 1980s, and the same tragedy engulfed the Murunahua in the mid-1990s after being forcibly contacted by illegal mahogany loggers.
Introduced diseases are the biggest killer of isolated tribal people, who have not developed immunity to viruses such as influenza, measles and chicken pox that most other societies have been in contact with for hundreds of years. He and his small band of survivors now live alone in a fragment of forest – all that remains of their land, and their people. One of the men, Pupak, has lead shot still buried in his back, and mimes the gunmen who pursued him on horseback. They are the last known survivors of their people and live in Rondônia state, western Brazil. The Akuntsu are a tiny Amazonian tribe of just five individuals. But when agents of Brazil’s Indian affairs department FUNAI contacted them in 1995, they found that the cattle ranchers who had taken over the Indians’ land had massacred almost all the tribe, and bulldozed their houses to try to cover up the massacre.
No-one speaks their language, so the precise details of what happened to them may never be known. Their fate is all the more tragic for being so recent. Of all the tribal peoples wiped out for standing in the way of ‘progress’, few are as poignant as the Akuntsu. Cattle ranchersĬattle ranching has destroyed nearly all the Akuntsu’s land. A vast array of powerful forces are ranged against them. Uncontacted tribes are the most vulnerable peoples on earth. Survival is urging people to support the Awá by messaging Brazil’s Minister of Justice.Awá men travel down a road cut by loggers, Brazil. The start of the logging season is a critical time. Brazil’s government must stop ignoring the Awá, and put them at the top of its agenda. Survival’s Director Stephen Corry said today, ‘The Awá may only number around 450 people, but in a short time their cause has become global news. One Awá man reacted by saying, ‘Very good, non-Indians, what you’re doing is really important, and really good! Help us as fast as you can. Since Colin Firth launched Survival’s campaign nearly six weeks ago, Brazil’s indigenous rights organization CIMI has shared the film with members of the Awá. However, thousands of illegal loggers are still believed to be operating in the area. It has also prompted Maranhão state’s public prosecutor to order an investigation into those responsible for invading Awá land, and to demand they are brought to justice. Survival’s campaign to save the Awá tribe has already generated over 27,000 messages to Brazil’s Justice Minister, calling for him to remove all invaders. The Awá’s urgent message pleads with Brazil’s Minister of Justice to ‘evict loggers from our land immediately… before they come back and destroy everything.’ The Awá tribe already suffers the fastest rate of deforestation in the Amazon, and the start of the dry season has in previous years brought a huge upsurge in illegal loggers. Earth’s ‘most threatened tribe’ has made a desperate appeal for the Brazilian government to halt the illegal logging that is ravaging its territory, as the Amazon’s logging season starts in earnest.
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