Brazilian officials traveled far into the Amazon rainforest in 2017 to keep an eye on the remote areas where the nation's indigenous tribes live. According to Richard Pérez-Pea of the New York Times, the crew is now disclosing information on the trip, including the first pictures of a group that has not yet made touch with the outside world.
The National Indigenous Foundation of Brazil, or Funai, which works to defend the rights of indigenous tribes, undertook the mission. Drone footage of a clearing in the Javari Valley, a sizable native reserve, is one of the photographs the group made public. Others can be seen wandering across the area in the video, including one who appears to be holding a spear or a pole.
In addition, Funai shared still images of some of the items that were discovered there, including a boat fashioned from the hollowed-out trunks of palm trees, a stone-bladed ax, and a thatched cottage.
Researchers can investigate Brazil's uncontacted peoples with the use of images like these. Bruno Pereira, a Funai official, tells the Associated Press that the more we understand about the way of life in remote areas, the more able we are to defend them.
Nonetheless, the group does not make an effort to interact with isolated Amazonian tribes because doing so might be risky. Over 100 tribes of people live in Brazil's jungles and opt to keep their distance from one another and outsiders, "very definitely [as] a result of prior tragic encounters and the continual invasion and devastation of their forest habitat," according to Survival International. Disease is a big issue; uncontacted peoples are particularly vulnerable to viruses brought by outsiders, and according to Survival, it "is not unusual" for 50 percent of a tribe to die from foreign illnesses within the first year of contact.