Seems like the world is continually getting smaller given the quick and vast spread of internet and technology. It is rather amazing to realize that there are groups of people and a number of communities that are still isolated from the 'global party'. Earlier this week, Brazilian agency FUNAI discovered a group of indigenous people living in a deep pocket of the Amazon that remain isolated from the rest of the world.
The community strength is estimated to be about 200 and their dwellings were captured in aerial shots through satellite pictures. It takes some effort for our imagination to wrap around the idea that "Pandora" could be an actual place, without the special effects. Prior to all this technology and the cyber takeover, there was a time when people could be self sufficient and reliant and basic human instincts were put to better use. The group is confirmed to be growing their own crops and don't depend on outside resources for their survival.
But our discovery of this tribe is not necessarily a blessing. For the sake of our own curiosity and wonderment we will bother them more than we intend to. According to previous uncontacted-tribe encounters, whenever we try to mingle with these groups, the outcomes are rather grim for the group. So far every tribe encountered by us has fallen prey to our germs. Germs of the modern world that are not present in nature. Through our vaccinations and "latest" biotechnology discoveries, the complexity of virus and bacteria have ten folded in nature and it is clear how unnatural we have become by merely contacting the indigenous.
In the last thirty years, the Maku nomadic group and the Zo'e tribe, both out of the Amazon basin, have lost over half of their populations by contracting diseases after we (the civilized) tried to contact them. But we don't learn our lessons well. An American mission called Jocum is persevering to end these preserving people. Based on a film documentary that captures a tribe burying a child alive, the Jocum mission is fighting to approve a law in Brazil that permits intervening in such practices.
These tribes have been in existence for as long as the rest of human race and have been surviving without our help or guidance for over 10,000 years. Are we really the ones to judge their practices and determine what's right for them to do? Radiation, nuclear power, pollution, and industrial wastes have become a part of our environment for the past few centuries. The developed world has enveloped a self destructive perspective. Perhaps we shouldn't be the ones judging the wiser indigenous people from the outside. We might have mastered mathematics, physics, and learned to defy the rules of gravity but given their survival instincts and self reliance it would be fair to say that they know some things better than we do or will ever understand.
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