OneWorld.net (U.S.)

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov 27 (OneWorld) - On the day established to remember early relations between North American colonists and Native Americans, indigenous rights groups are amplifying their efforts to protect the very last tribes who remain untouched by colonial influences.

Uncontacted tribe photographed from an airplane near the Brazil-Peru border. © funai.gov.br via TravelingMan (flickr)An official in the Brazilian government said late last week that rare Amazonian tribes that have evaded "civilization" thus far could soon be wiped out by illegal ranchers and loggers.

Under most immediate threat is the Piripkura, a tribe with an unknown population that lives in Brazil's northwestern Amazon. Members of the tribe are thought to survive by hunting with wooden sticks and a knife they found in the jungle.

If illegal ranching and logging in their area continues, the tribe will face "genocide," Jose Meirelles, a researcher with Brazil's Indian Affairs agency, stated in a press release put out by Survival International last week.

Survival, which is one of the oldest organizations working to support indigenous people, says loggers have intentionally blocked the Piripkura's trails to drive them off their land. Loss of land can mean death for hunter-gatherer tribes like the Piripkura, and forced contact with outsiders often leads to the spread of deadly illnesses to which they have no immunity.

Logging can also cause conflicts between tribes over scarcer resources, according to Beatriz Huertas, an official with the international indigenous rights group CIPIACI, who was quoted by Reuters last month.

"Uncontacted tribes in the most remote parts of the Peruvian Amazon could disappear within three years."
- Jose Meirelles, Brazil's Indian Affairs agencySurvival is urging the Brazilian government to grant the Piripkura legal rights to their lands.

A similar threat plagues isolated tribes in Peru.

"Uncontacted tribes in the most remote parts of the Peruvian Amazon could disappear within three years," Meirelles said in a Survival press release.

"Putting it simply, the loggers are killing and expelling the isolated people," Meirelles told Reuters. Meirelles has spent the last 20 years living in the remote Amazonian regions on the border of Peru and Brazil where he studies local tribes.

Survival is urging the public to write letters to the Peruvian government or a local embassy about the need to protect tribes.

Some 50 uncontacted tribes are believed to exist in the Peru-Brazil border region, half of the estimated 100 uncontacted tribes worldwide.

The term "uncontacted" means that the tribes have had no peaceful contact with outsiders, although they may be known to exist or have met with other Amazonian tribes.

Some experts believe that such tribes intentionally avoid outside contact due to negative impressions left on their ancestors after encounters with missionaries and rubber workers of the late 19th Century.

When uncontacted tribes do emerge, they mesh poorly with modern society, experts say. The Brazilian government estimates that Brazil's 350,000 native people numbered 5 million prior to Europeans' arrival in the country.

Besides being some of the last people to maintain a pristine version of humanity's 100,000-year-old tribal heritage, members of these remote tribes are also treasured by conservationists who are eager to learn from the native people's unique knowledge of the forest.

Efforts to protect tribes like the Piripkura have received increased attention since photos of an uncontacted tribe were taken from an airplane flying over the Brazil-Peru border earlier this year.

The newly photographed tribe appears to use hand-made cotton belts, headbands, skirts, and hammocks, which they string beneath thick roofs made of thatched palms, according to Meirelles, who was in the plane when the pictures were taken. Nearby fields indicate the cultivation of almonds, pumpkin, potato, bananas, maize, and other crops, he said.

The photos received international attention in part because of suggestions by multiple oil companies and Peru's President Alan Garcia that uncontacted tribes were myths invented by anti-industry groups and did not actually exist.

In what seems a contradiction to this claim, U.S. oil firm Barrett Resources and Spain's Repsol-YPF have put out manuals telling their workers in the Amazon how to deal with curious native people who appear out of the jungle to investigate the mysterious lights and sounds produced by machines.

To confront the potential genocide of isolated peoples, an emergency meeting in Pucallpa, Peru was organized by a federation of indigenous tribes earlier this month and attended by prominent indigenous rights groups working in the Amazon including CIPIACI, and Brazil's Centre for Indigenist Work (CTI).

Activists at the meeting drafted the Declaration of Pucallpa, a document outlining the plight of tribes in Peru.

The Declaration criticizes the Peruvian government for failing to protect tribes from companies whose illegal activities force "first contact" and drive native people from their land.

"In Peru there is no government institution able to take responsibility for protecting and defending uncontacted tribes," the Declaration reads. "Important decisions about these people are taken by ministers, public bodies, and companies who agree with the government's policies of resource exploitation."

But Mayta Capac Alatrista, president of INDEPA, a Peruvian governmental organization charged with supporting indigenous peoples, says his organization would create reserves for uncontacted tribes, if their existence could be proved.

"We have received commentaries from nearby villagers that these tribes exist, but we have not had visual contact," Alatrista told OneWorld.

According to Alatrista, INDEPA has already set up one reserve for indigenous peoples, identified four zones to become reserves, and organized an inter-ministerial commission to study whether five more areas should be made into reserves.

If tribes are proven to actually live in these five areas, "reserves will be created," he said.

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