Imperiled Amazon Indians Make 1st Contact with Outsiders

[xchrom]

http://www.livescience.com/46610-amazon-tribe-makes-first-outside-contact.html

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Advocates are concerned by a recent uptick in sightings of uncontacted people. This image was released by Survival International in 2011.
Credit: Survival International

Indigenous people with no prior contact to the outside world have just emerged from the Amazon rainforest in Brazil and made contact with a group of settled Indians, after being spotted migrating to evade illegal loggers, advocates say.

The news, which was released yesterday (July 2), comes after sightings of the uncontacted Indians in Brazil near the border with Peru, according to the group Survival International. Officials with the organization had warned last month that the isolated tribes face threats of disease and violence as they moved into new territory and possibly encountered other people.

"Something serious must have happened," José Carlos Meirelles, a former official with the Brazilian Indian Affairs Department FUNAI, said in a statement. "It is not normal for such a large group of uncontacted Indians to approach in this way. This is a completely new and worrying situation, and we currently do not know what has caused it." [See Photos of Uncontacted Amazon Tribe]

Survival International officials said dozens of uncontacted Indians were recently spotted close to the home of the Ashaninka Indians in Brazil's Acre state along the Envira River, while a government investigation in the region uncovered more ephemeral traces of the tribe on the move: footprints, temporary camps and food leftovers. On Sunday (June 29), reports suggest, the vulnerable group of Indians made contact with the Asháninka.

[angstlessk]

1. This just angers and frustrates me...

these people who just want to be left alone, but are threatened by stealing their resources and habitat...

I thought about not posting this, because it is it makes no difference...it is futile...the world is not worth the paper it used to have in wood pulp

[defacto7]

2. Agree. Nothing else to say.

But it needs to be heard anyway.

[OnlinePoker]

3. I'm seeing what looks like a metal machete and pot

Definitely not the first contact with the outside world.