Uncontacted Tribes Discovered In Brazil (PHOTOS)

The BBC reported last night that an uncontacted tribe had been discovered on the border between Brazil and Peru.

According to the Guardian, there are around 100 uncontacted tribes in the world. "Survival International estimates more than half are in the Brazilian and Peruvian Amazon."

The National Indian Foundation, a government agency in Brazil, took these photos and published them Thursday. According to CNN, "it tracks "uncontacted tribes" -- indigenous groups that are thought to have had no contact with outsiders -- and seeks to protect them from encroachment.

They and their relatives apparently live in six communal shelters known as malocas, according to the government, which has tracked at least four uncontacted groups in the region for the last 20 years.

The photos were taken during 20 hours of flights conducted between April 28 and May 2.

More photos here.

Comments

[MrTrailSafety]

Too bad they didnt shoot down the helo and eat whitey. Or at least get past the fatty parts.

[Lion24]

Quick. Send GPS coordinates to Hillary now. Campaign stop there could put her over the top!

[tyrdofwaitin]

They're not lost. They weren't lookin for us.

We're lost and stumbled onto them.

[QueenCeleste]

Well said.

[WilliePilgrim]

The concept of people living in primitive or "pre-contact" conditions suggests that these people are remanants of neolithic cultures adapted over millenium to the natural wilderness in which they live. Recent advancements in understanding the true history of the peoples of the Amazonian Basin and its surrounding environs suggests that we may be missing a critical part of these peoples' history and that in pre-european contact times the peoples of this region were living in a productive society of millions of people, with a long culture and agricultural industry of small multicropped farms, the remnants of which still exist as structured soils composed of chacoal and pottery shards along linear ridges and ditches created by the inhabitants over hundres or thousands of years and covering millions of acres. These facts often gets lost between the battle to either cut and plow the area in the name of developement or leaving the area in some kind of untouched state with the misguided notion that the people are better off as primitive savages.
If we came upon a village of naked and barefoot jews following WW2, would we presume that we should leave them in their found state just because that's how we found them? Clearly the best thing is to help them regain the civilization they lost when europeans first entered their lands and whose diseases all but annihilated their people and culture..

[floydknight]

Huh??

[ZimboChick]

u must be what they have been calling a conservative in here...stuck up! Get over it. They r not lost. The land is not untouched...they r utilising it and how dare you put your fingers on the keyboard and type this "the battle to either cut and plow the area in the name of developement or leaving the area in some kind of untouched state with the misguided notion that the people are better off as primitive savages." drivel!

Go away

[JasonQuiggleGivesaDamn]

Your conclusions are kinda muddled bro. How you could equate the Jews after WW2 to this tribe is..well, that is very creative but not very accurate.

[Kasandra]

Oh for the love of all the gods leave them the hell alone!

[BabsfromKS]

AMEN!

[TRYKER]

Their existence is threatened by a multitude of dams being proposed that would flood millions of acres of their homeland.

[jfor]

Well we better hurry up and send some christian missionaries to sneeze on them.

[ZimboChick]

lol lol

[filo]

What happened to the alien video? Is this it ?

[JasonQuiggleGivesaDamn]

Ok, lots of you are suggesting this maybe a hoax....now tell me why? why would someone spend money to perpetrate this hoax? Why?

[amanda85]

Ever seen Krippendorf's Tribe? ;)

[JasonQuiggleGivesaDamn]

Yeah. It's not just this story though, lately EVERYTHING is some kind of hoax, it's getting ridiculous. And I still haven't heard a good motive for doing such a thing.

[cargocult]

I am perhaps MOST suspicious of who and how of the defining this 'uncontacted tribe'. I am suspicious of the who and the why of these low level fly overs. I'm suspicious of the popular media like the HP would choose this day to dabble in anthropology. I have my doubts that HP ought to be my lead source of info on this story. I suspect HP may have linked to it because it is a slow news day and there were some shiny colorful images attached.

I run into many people in my daily life who seem to base their entire value system and world view on things they've read in unsolicited email chain letters.

I choose rather to have a little cynicism.

[kidshare]

I suspect this story is filling the space where the Roman Catholic Rev. Michael L. Pfleger story should go.

[surfcitysteven]

These are people that Fox forgot when they were going to run a pilot for their first "Survivor" series.

[CraigB]

Quick! Send in some missionaries! Their poor damnable souls are in peril!

[amanda85]

Yeah, I know where they got the idea...

http://youtube.com/watch?v=SsFA-_OYzLQ
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120725/

[ruscle]

Boy, Do they ever need a Starbucks and a Burger King.

Quick. Send in the corporate heads to negotiate a contract.

[Topfeeder]

Dude, I totally cheated off jamjam's history exam in community college.

[jamjam]

As for the pomposity: I apologise I suppose that's part of the scientific training at the education institutions I attended in the country I grew up (Ireland) - and I suppose it's partially my own writing.

I think those people posting things like 'leave them alone', would do well to go back and read the discussion, less for my comments than for other people's as there have been some very well written posts here - much more concise than mine thankfully :) So cheers.

[ZimboChick]

jamjam, i have not seen your contributions but would like to kindly say I am not saying leave them alone from purely an emotional point of view but from knowing the adverse effects of "being discovered". Do you not think that it is rather selfish for your people to go in and "study" these tribes for YOUR scientific gain. Think about it.

[jamjam]

I have to go but I'll thank everyone who I had discussions with for their contributions, and I certainly feel as though I've encountered a range of opinions on an issue that is, beyond everything we talked about, utterly fascinating.

I would stress again the point that I'm not advocating this tribe's introduction into Western society. I would also stress to the people approaching this from a emotionally charged standpoint, that it might be wise to consider that studying such a tribe could reveal great insight - and that there are other cultures, who they might be exposed to (for good or, as the opinion appears to be, for ill), beyond the 'American contemporary' that is, the contemporary culture in the United States.

The issue of contention appears to be that studying these tribes may be too great of a risk, in that the potential for our scientific knowledge base to be expanded is not worth the risk of interrupting, disrupting or potentially dislocating these people.

I understand that risk and I will leave my own commentary on the discussion there, but I've learnt a great deal from people's comments and this is one of the more interesting threads of read and engaged with on Huffington Post, so thank you.

[nodadchad]

Guys I heard that Obama and Clinton will be joinging this tribe and then conducting a primary amongst the natives! I'm sure they are more organized than Florida!*

*Can there be one news story that is not followed by ironic primary humor? Please?

[LeftCoastLefty]

I've got a little crush on the bright red one.