The challenge of protecting the Amazon’s uncontacted peoples
Understanding and protecting someone by studying whatever they leave behind on their wanderings, including bows, arrows, artifacts, and traces of food and makeshift camps—such is the routine of experts who dedicate their lives to the defense of native groups in voluntary isolation.
One such champion was Bruno Pereira, former head of the General Coordination of Uncontacted and Recently Contacted Indigenous People of Brazil’s indigenous agency FUNAI. He was killed in an ambush back in June 2022—an incident that also cost the life of The Guardian correspondent Dom Phillips. The two paid the price for denouncing social and environmental crimes in the Amazon Forest.
One year after the killings, important questions regarding the communities Pereira and Phillips sought to protect remain unanswered. Uncontacted groups are more numerous in Brazil’s Vale do Javari indigenous territory than anywhere else in the world. The place is also home to other peoples, including groups that have just recently made contact.
Isolation is often a choice made by members of these communities. For a variety of reasons, they prefer to keep away from non-indigenous people—sometimes even from other native groups—usually refusing to stay in contact with the government and adopt a profit-oriented way of thinking, as this has led to conflicts and the death of many of their peers. Trauma from past experiences, such as clashes with other peoples, is also commonplace.
As a book on the subject signed by the Indigenous Missionary Council (CIMI) and the Federal University of Amazonas points out, “the existence of isolated indigenous groups—many of them driven out of their lands to seek refuge in extremely hard-to-reach places—alerts us to the ‘development terrorism,’ thought to be based on external interests, outside the Amazon.”
According to the publication, released in 2011, this form of seclusion is more common in the Amazon because of its geographical and environmental features. However, other locations—such as the Brazilian cerrado; the Gran Chaco, wedged between Paraguay and southern Bolivia; and islands in New Guinea and southern India—are also home to communities in voluntary isolation.
As anthropologist Tiago Moreira from the Socio-environmental Institute (ISA) explains, many abandon their isolation to signal their existence and way of life is under threat. The call for help may also occur subtly. “More often than not, these peoples have sporadic contact with other indigenous groups, and even manage to acquire metal tools, like machetes and axes,” he noted.
Anthropologist Gilberto Azanha, founder of the Indigenous Work Center (CTI), said the scarce number of tracks and traces that groups in voluntary isolation leave behind is deliberate. “What do we mean by ‘living in concealment’? Concealment means leaving little trace,” he pointed out.
“Situations may vary. Each group has a deep story about their experiences of contact with others—whether it’s with terrible people, like our agents from Western society, or missionaries, agents of real estate speculation, loggers, or other indigenous peoples in the region. All of them have their own stories. Until they decide to come forward, tell their story, and reveal why they became isolated, we can only speculate,” Azanha said.
The isolated group living in the Massaco territory, in Rondônia state, Azanha says, are among those that seem curious to see what happens on their borders. “They go on a few excursions. Specialists usually talk about how young people draw near in a bid to have a look on what’s going on. They leave some clues that the FUNAI staff follows up on. Then, the agents resort to a protection system wherever these groups decided to show up unexpectedly.”
As there is little to no verbal communication with the isolated peoples that could help up catch a glimpse into their culture, they are generally identified by their geographical location. There are names such as “the isolated people of the High Xeruã,” “of the Copaca/Uarini River,” and “of Igarapé Lambança.”
Some of these peoples, Azanha added, develop a high degree of sophistication in their night roamings. Since their aim is usually to move around unnoticed, one of the groups has even ceased planting crops, opening clearings in the forest, and building permanent houses.
In Rondônia back in the 1980s, there were reports of isolated groups who ended up coming across people who did not belong to their community and the result was a high death count, Tiago Moreira recalled.
“In the 1980s, a non-contact policy was devised, chiefly because approach experiences had been disastrous, people were dying, and large population losses were becoming the norm. FUNAI, along with anthropologists and experts, got together to come up with a plan. So this no-contact policy was recommended, and a series of protocols were put into place, because contact would eventually have to be made in case of risk to the [isolated] group in question,” he explained.
Assistance
The authority tasked with monitoring and registering indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation is FUNAI. However, other entities, like ISA, collaborate in this role. The entity, Moreira went on to note, searches for traces and tries to keep a safe distance from them.” “It’s a thorough and careful job, because locating the traces left by these groups in the forest can be daunting. On the other hand, you can’t just stand there fooling around, because you might just run into these isolated people. We have lost a colleague from FUNAI, Rieli [Franciscato, coordinator of the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau Ethno-Environmental Protection Front]. He was hit by an arrow from an isolated group.”
In the case of ISA, Moreira said, the surveillance is done with the assistance of satellites. “We try to gauge pressures on the territory, rather than simply ascertaining whether isolated groups are there, as it’s nearly impossible to track their location by satellite. So we watch for threats, chiefly deforestation,” he remarked.
Moreira noted that similar groups can also be located in the Yanomami territory. “What we have seen in the last four, five years is that there’s been an unprecedented growth in deforestation in indigenous lands, and a significant portion of it is reported in lands occupied by isolated peoples.”
In the anthropologist’s view, the number-one enemies of the peoples in voluntary isolation today are illegal mining and deforestation. In addition, these communities have to deal with drug trafficking, ranchers, hunters, squatters, loggers, and real estate speculation.
