IT'S like a scene from an Indiana Jones blockbuster – but this time it's for real. Photographed from a passing plane, painted figures stir in a clearing in the Amazonian rainforest. Two men with bows and arrows crouch, ready to fire at the overhead aggressor, strings drawn back and ready for release.
They are ritually painted bright orange with pigment from an Amazonian tree, while just feet behind a figure painted black – a woman in a white loincloth – also stares up into the sky.
Beyond them the entire village is coming to life. Other tribesmen emerge from traditional thatched longhouses armed and prepared to fight. Young children scamper for safety as the small aircraft, recording their lives and confirming their existence to the outside world, circles above.
They live in six huts in the depths of the Brazilian rainforest, without any known contact with the 'civilised' world, and the body language of the tribe suggests they have a way of life worth defending. From the images collected and posted on the internet last week, all – adults and children alike – look fit and healthy. They have none of the material trappings of the developed and increasingly overdeveloped world, but appear none the worse for it.
So stunning was this glimpse into a long-forgotten era in the Acre region on the Brazil-Peruvian border that many observers assumed at first that the images were faked. But the Brazilian government body that monitors the existence of the dwindling band of 'uncontacted' tribes insists its pictures are both genuine and taken for good scientific reasons.
"We did the overflight to show their houses, to show they are there, to show they exist," said uncontacted tribes expert José Carlos dos Reis Meirelles Júnior, who works for Funai, the Brazilian government's Indian affairs department. "This is very important because there are some who doubt their existence."
However, the release of the images has sparked a debate over whether their way of life is now more at risk because more people are aware of the village's existence. How long will it be before wealthy adventurers and tourists go in search of an authentic Amazonian experience? How long will it be before illegal loggers attempt to clear them off their land to get at valuable timber without obstruction?
Their discovery now poses a range of moral dilemmas for the authorities. Should the tribe be left alone to continue their contented sustainable lifestyle for as long as they can? Or should contact be forced, by scientists of good intent, to prepare uncontacted peoples for their inevitable first encounter with the 21st century?
Dr Nicole Bourque, a Glasgow University anthropologist who has studied Amazonian cultures, said that even among experts views are divided. "Some will say leave them untouched. Others, probably the majority, will say more contact is inevitable. So the best thing you can hope for is managed contact, where you send an appropriate person in to prepare them for what might happen. At least then the first outsiders they meet are decent people."
It is impossible to calculate with any accuracy how many tribes of uncontacted people survive in the world's jungles. The best guess of experts in the field is that around 100 small groups remain, mostly in the Amazonian rainforest – an area the size of western Europe. Other isolated remnants are also believed to exist in remote areas of densely forested islands, such as Papua New Guinea.
How many of these are genuinely unaware of the modern world is also unknown. "To be honest, I think first contact is a bit of a myth these days," Bourque said. "Even if they are genuinely uncontacted, then they will probably have been in contact with other similar Indian groups who have had contact with outsiders."
What is certain is that "contact" almost always ends in disaster.
A decade ago, fabled "first contact" was made with the Murunahua group, living in an area to the west of the tribe in last week's pictures, in the Peruvian jungle. About 100-strong, they were surviving well until illegal loggers came in search of mahogany, much prized in the making of Western-style furniture, and for which a market still exists despite international condemnation of felling trees from virgin forest. David Hill, a researcher for Survival International, a global charity that campaigns for the civil rights of threatened indigenous people, has witnessed the aftermath.
"They were forcibly contacted by illegal loggers, who shoot to kill, and since then 50% of them have died. Some were shot, but most died from diseases that were introduced to them." Simple viruses such as the flu, for which Westerners have developed a range of natural defences down the generations, can prove fatal to peoples who have always lived in isolation.
Last year, Hill travelled to Peru to interview the remnants of the tribe. One survivor, Jorge, who was shot in the eye by loggers, told him: "When the loggers made contact with us, we came out of the rainforest. That was when the disease began. Half of us died. My aunt died, my nephew died. Half of my people died."
The group now live in a more conventional village and have adopted Western-style clothing and a money-based economy. However, other Murunahua groups still exist, still living the traditional way, in communities deep in the forest – and they do not seem to want to be 'discovered'. "What has happened," says Hill, "is they have moved even deeper into the forest."
Hill is delighted that last week's image of the Acre tribe – believed to be related to the Tano and Aruak tribes – made global headlines. "It puts pressure on governments to stop the logging," he said. "I have no doubt that the aim of the flight was right, because it was to discover where the uncontacted tribes are living, how many of them there are and how they are living, with the ultimate goal of defending their land and their rights. If you don't know where they are, then you can't protect them as well.
However, Survival International is firmly in the camp of leaving the tribe on its own. "We would warn sternly against further contact," Hill said, citing the proven threat of disease.
A practical way of protecting the tribes is to come down heavily on the loggers, and the Brazilian government has closed down 28 illegal sawmills in Acre state.
Another is deterring the curious. The difficulties of reaching these areas means they are beyond the reach of most Western tourists, which explains the vicarious popularity of programmes such as the BBC's Tribe, in which former army officer Bruce Parry lived with various remote tribes around the world.
Although the programme makers embedded Parry in tribes that had clearly had extensive contact with outsiders, his presence raised the question of whether global exposure could bring long-term benefits.
Where Parry goes now, however, well-heeled tourists are sure to follow. In the highlands of West Papua, travellers can already pay $8,000 to be led into the jungles for what are labelled as "first contact" experiences.
Bourque for one is saddened. "You get the curiosity factor and you want your picture taken with a tribesman so you can tell your friends at home or post it on your blog. People do not think about the long-term impact on these communities."
However, she believes that contact with friendly outsiders is preferable to conflict with potentially hostile commercial interests, and that the time may be close when uncontacted groups have to be gently eased into the modern age.
"It would be better if first contact came from the appropriate people with the right motives and the right medical support, who could prepare them for the future and what might happen."
Hill wants to put off that day for as long as possible. "Everyone is aware of globalisation and the way we are all converging in so many amazing ways. But isn't it fantastic that there are pockets of the world where there are people content to be outside all that?"
http://news.scotsman.com/opinion/A-tribe-is-discovered-in.4139868.jp
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