Lost Amazon Tribe Not Actually Lost: A Surprise To Someone, Apparently
Posted by Ross Rosenberg
Last month the world was astounded by photographs, taken in the Amazon, showing one of the last tribes of uncontacted indigenous people, according to reports at the time. News agencies were quickly setting their presses ablaze with the news, the Casually Racist Victorian Antiquarian Times running the headline “Tribe Of Savages, Unconverted And Unsullied, Found: Fear Of Flying Machine Proves The Need For Our Intervention”.
At least that’s the kind of headline one would expect to have read considering the current reaction to the revelation that, far from lost, the tribe’s existence had been known about since 1910, and that the photographer, one José Carlos Meirelles — working for the Brazilian Indian Protection Agency — deliberately flew out to terrify them with his flying, mechanical dragon photograph them to lend credence to the thinking that the “policy of no contact and protection was working.”
The outrage over this seems to me to be, perhaps, misplaced. I could find few articles from major news agencies claiming that a lost tribe had been discovered. An MSN article even quotes Jose Carlos dos Reis Meirelles, head of the Brazilian government’s National Indian Foundation (FUNAI), as saying
We have been watching this isolated indigenous community for at least 20 years. The idea in revealing the photos was to raise the alarm over the risk threatening them.
This information is repeated in another article by The Associated Press:
Anthropologists have known about the group for some 20 years but released the images now to call attention to fast-encroaching development near the Indians’ home in the dense jungles near Peru.
So, yes, 20 years is not the same as the now revealed 98, however, the fact still remains that the Brazillian government knew of this tribe and did not claim to have just discovered them at the time the photos were taken. There also seems to be some anger over the fact that by flying over this village and photographing them, Meirelles has in fact contacted them in the process. This I can understand, but I have a feeling that, having been recorded as early as 1910, chances are they have been contacted previously, though most likely sans airplane. Anyone care to enlighten me as to why people are so up in arms about this?
Secret of the ‘lost’ tribe that wasn’t [The Observer]
Categories: Anthropology, Irony, Photographs, Rail, Science
Posted at 9:39 am on June 24, 2008
16 Comments -
this is a “white man’s burden” joke waiting to happen.
Comment by corben — June 24, 2008 @ 9:50 am
Bah fucking humbug!
I read about this at the weekend in the newspaper.
The justification that “Survival” gave for this publicity stunt was interesting. The justification was to raise awareness of the presence of the tribe (again and to a wider audience) in order to force the government of Peru and Brazil to monitor logging in the tribes area more closely.
People are annoyed by the deception. I’m annoyed at being cheated out of being witness (third hand) to a cool anthropological event. Oh well the worst thing that this has caused aside from pestling some helpless indigenous people with low flying aircraft is that next time some new tribe is found we’ll all be far to cynical to care.
Bah humbug!
Comment by Will — June 24, 2008 @ 9:55 am
I can only hope this is like the one remaining, unsullied indigenous tribe in Matt Fraction’s Casanova, who turn out to be harboring a society from the future full of advanced miracle-technology.
Comment by chesh — June 24, 2008 @ 9:58 am
And I can see why that would be, but it seems to me that what deception there was, was almost an invention of those reprinting the information than the work of those distributing it.
Comment by Ross Rosenberg — June 24, 2008 @ 9:59 am
Bah- most of us knew this already- I mean, just look at the photos!
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2310/2536069773_0a9b37144f_o.jpg
Comment by Dmitri — June 24, 2008 @ 11:01 am
Still doesn’t change the fact that they shat bricks when they saw a chopper.
now there wondering on how to kill the next one
its escalation now
Comment by salthegeek — June 24, 2008 @ 11:57 am
first thing that came to mind when i heard about this was: “how long ’til the missionaries start running down there in hoards to “save” them?”
Comment by dispodip — June 24, 2008 @ 12:04 pm
The mechanical dragon should send them into hiding once more.
Comment by steve — June 24, 2008 @ 12:23 pm
Crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of the women!
Comment by wilton — June 24, 2008 @ 12:28 pm
It’s not like they realistically wouldn’t have seen a plane before.
Comment by Mike — June 24, 2008 @ 4:00 pm
One could guess now, that a few of them have died in the resulting tribal sacrifices to appease the the demon that revealed itself. As well as a lone native to go and possibly find the lair of the foul beast, in hopes of finding a way to destroy it.
-Aza
Comment by LordAza — June 24, 2008 @ 5:42 pm
Hopefully nobody dropped a Coke bottle out of the plane.
Comment by G-rad — June 24, 2008 @ 11:23 pm
Hah!! This reminds me of an article from National Geographic published somewhere in the seventies.
Oh, here we go, a little research goes a long way… this is the article I remember reading.
http://www.larryjzimmerman.com/lost/Tasaday/Tasaday.htm
For those who don’t want to read it, the short version is that in the Phillipines in 1971 a National Geographic journalist reported a lost tribe isolated from society. It turned out to be a hoax in which some of the indiginous peoples played the part of loinclothed natives living in a remote area forgotten by time. National Geographic had to run a correction some years down the road about the whole ordeal.
I wonder if this is the same… funny stuff there.
Comment by Epheros — June 24, 2008 @ 11:39 pm
Well, this was a severe case of misunderstanding. Or, most possibly, mis-tranlastion.
You see, being brazilian means I saw those pictures with the original press-release attached to them. It said the tribe was isolated but was under observation since the creation of FUNAI (National Foundation for the Native-Brazilians), which was about 20 or 30 years ago. So, I gather the translator just said “well, lost tribe found, being watched by the government” and some journalist went crazy with it.
Apart from that, those people might not have any official contact with other people, but they sure as hell know what kind of people fly in choppers over the peruvian border.
(drug dealers, if you’re wondering. It might come as a shock to a lot of people, but the Amazon is mainly used as a route for drug traffic. You can’t get police inside a protected jungle.)
Comment by Leticia Lopes — June 26, 2008 @ 9:27 pm
One in the middle looks like he’s taking a picture of the flying, mechanical dragon with his cell phone.
Comment by Evil Jim — June 26, 2008 @ 11:43 pm
Greetings from the Peruvian Amazon!
“Nice article! Do you have any more photographs of this lost tribe? Amazonian tribes are so beautiful. I found some wonder pictures of Amazon tribes at Amazon Tribes They have some wonderful articles on uncontacted tribes and show that this is not a hoax and that these are real uncontracted indigenous Amazonians.
Thanks for the wonder eye-opening article!
Comment by Johannes Wurst — December 25, 2008 @ 4:59 pm