Ehnologists protect Lone survivor of unknown Indian tribe murdered by encroaching Western civ.

[Leopolds Ghost]

Last of His Kind (VIDEO)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/video/2008/01/11/VI2008011103012.html

(the first encounter with rescue mission)

And Then There Was One

Discovery of a lone survivor of an unknown Indian tribe in Brazil set off
accusations of murder and a struggle over ownership of one of the world's
last great wilderness areas

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/08/AR2008010803472.html

By Monte Reel
Sunday, January 13, 2008; Page W12

THe Rumor Was A Wild One, and it
seized Marcelo dos Santos with the
power of a primary myth.

There's an Indian living in the woods around here,
some local ranch hands were saying in 1996. He wears no clothes.
Get near him, and he vanishes. He is utterly alone.

( ... )

Just a few months earlier, Marcelo and his tracking partner Altair Algayer had made first contact with an isolated tribe of Kanoe Indians that had been reduced to five survivors. Shortly after that, they found another tribe, the Akuntsu, with only six members living several miles from the Kanoe. They'd gotten the land for those tribes declared off-limits to development. And for that, the loggers and ranchers who wanted a piece of that land for themselves viewed Marcelo and Altair just as suspiciously as those two viewed the loggers and ranchers.

The rumor's trail led to a logging operation near a cattle ranch. Marcelo and Altair, careful to sneak past the boss, found the company cook. "Yeah, I've seen him," the cook told them, "and I know where he lives. Do you want to see?"

Wasn't the idea of an essentially self-sufficient man living in unbroken communion with nature practically impossible now, more than 500 years after conquistadors, prospectors, slavers, missionaries, rubber tappers and scientists started penetrating the Amazon's depths?

But when they stepped into the forest with the cook, they walked straight into an epic quest that would obsess, delight and terrify them for more than a decade. It would send them dodging arrows and would incite pitched battles with landowners that would upend lives forever. They would become detectives, piecing together the clues of a murder case that would ultimately offer them a glimpse of fathomless solitude.

On the constricting edge of one of the last truly wild places on Earth, one man's unlikely existence would show them what true survival meant and would underscore the value of mystery in a world with little room left for the unknown.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/08/AR2008010803472.html

[Leopolds Ghost]

1. "A Land Without Men for Men Without Land" -- Brazil seeks to move -peones- into Amazonia

This wasn't the kind of path that Altair seemed born to tread. People called him "the German," a nod to his fair hair and light eyes. He was born near Brazil's east coast into a family of farmers who followed the government's call to become frontiersmen in the newly created state of Rondonia. Altair's father couldn't resist the pull of the program's slogan: "A Land Without Men, for Men Without Land."

He was working a lumberyard in the north of Rondonia when a Funai team came to investigate reports of indios bravos -- "wild Indians" -- in a nearby national reserve being tapped by loggers for hardwood. The team collected evidence in the woods, found bows and arrows, and took pictures of small crop fields. But most of the loggers complained that the evidence was contrived to ruin their commercial prospects.

"You know, Altair," the man told him, "we're always looking for allies."

That exchange is what eventually led to his introduction to his trusted friend and mentor Marcelo dos Santos. Marcelo had joined Funai's jungle crew years earlier, after growing up in Sao Paulo, one of the most relentlessly urban environments on Earth. After dropping out of college, Marcelo sold all of his possessions and moved to Rondonia (...) He drifted for a while until he stumbled upon Funai's local office.

Indians, he thought. They live without money, without possessions. Sharing all, claiming nothing. Maybe this is the place for me.

Marcelo went native, dramatically. After being hired by Funai, he spent almost all of his time in the jungle with tribes. He hunted with them, choked down the same insect larvae they ate, journeyed across untrodden paths in search of fruits. For nearly two years, he went barefoot -- until his feet were so battered he could barely walk. In 1979, he began working with a tribe called the Negarote, which had only 18 members surviving from the estimated 300 in the late 1950s. His job was to nurse the tribe back to health, acting as a sort of social worker. For several years, he went from hut to hut, living among the families. He built a small house next to the tribal village and lived with the Negarote until 1990.

[Leopolds Ghost]

2. "They found the men massacred ... All of them -- women and children" -- decided to commit suicide

Fresh off of their successes in contacting the Kanoe and Akuntsu tribes, they set their sights on recruiting the one man they figured would be most able to provide a window onto the life of the lone Indian: Pur¿ Kano¿.

It had been just over a year since they had made first contact with Purá, the only adult male in the five-member Kanoe tribe. Marcelo and Altair had sat for hours with Purá, patiently communicating with hand gestures. Eventually, an elderly Indian from the other side of Rondonia who spoke Portuguese and a related tribal language was brought in to translate the stories of Purá and his mother, Tutuá. Slowly, the team pieced together the Kanoe tribe's grim history.

In the 1970s, when the group numbered about 50, all of the tribe's adult males ventured out of their tiny village together in search of different Indian groups in the hope of arranging marriages. After several days, the men didn't return, so a small group of women formed a search party. They found the men massacred, killed by unknown assailants. The women panicked, convinced they couldn't survive and care for their children on their own. So they made a pact: All of them -- women and children -- would drink a deadly poison derived from the timbo plant and commit collective suicide. But Purá's mother, Tutuá, refused to swallow. As she vomited fiercely, she rid herself of the traces of poison and was able to stop her two children, her sister and her niece from sipping the fatal brew.

The tiny tribe had lived on its own for nearly two decades -- until Marcelo and Altair encountered Purá and his sister on a jungle trail in September 1995. The team members figured that if anyone could help them find the lone Indian, an Indian who had been in a similar situation until very recently might be their best bet.

( ... )

It was a fluted bamboo arrow, sharpened to a deadly point. Pur¿ nervously decided to speak up: "Mampi no," he said in the Kanoe tongue. Don't shoot. The man didn't react and continued to twist the arrow.

Purá began an awkward dance, clapping his hands arrhythmically -- a tribal ritual meant to summon protection from the gods. The Indian hadn't responded to Purá's words, and he wasn't responding now. It made Purá suspect he was from a tribe Purá had never encountered.

Altair again stepped slowly toward the hut, and he saw the Indian draw his bow. Altair slowly backed up, showing the man his palms, meaning no harm. The Indian lowered his bow. Altair, hands still up in the air, slowly took another step forward; the man drew his bow again. Altair got the message: The Indian was drawing an imaginary line in the dirt about 10 feet around his hut, saying, Keep your distance.

( ... )

Purá knew how dangerous a member of an isolated tribe could be if he believed his life was threatened. But even Purá, who had always relied only on the help of his small tribe to survive, couldn't fathom how hostile that Indian might be if he had lived for years with no established communion with another living soul.

Purá turned and ran as fast as he could through the forest, terrified.

( ... )

Purá provided the team members with a very clear window on what can happen when outsiders suddenly intervene in the life of such a person. Ethical traps pop up everywhere. Shortly after Purá saw the jungle camp that Funai built to monitor the Kanoe and Akuntsu tribes -- a collection of large, rectangular wood-and-thatch huts with sloping rooftops -- Purá reconsidered the wigwam-shaped huts in his tiny village, tore them down and rebuilt new houses using the newly observed architectural style. He used knives, axes and machetes lent to him by the Funai team members, who didn't think it was right to deny him tools that they used themselves. The Kanoe -- unlike the Akuntsu, for example -- had always worn clothes tribe members made themslves, but, after Purá got to know the Funai team, he began to prefer T-shirts and shorts.

Team members believed that his traditional clothes were beautiful, but could they really blame him if he liked their exotic clothes and found them more comfortable, too? A similar circumstance arose with the Akuntsu. Though team members praised the beaded necklaces and jewelry that the women wore, they found that after contact was made, the women had begun to wear something new as earrings: aluminum tabs from soda and beer cans.

The Kanoe still struggled to survive, hunting for their meals and facing the painful realization that their prospects for lasting another generation were growing slimmer. ... One morning in 2000, Marcelo accompanied Purá to the Akuntsu village to investigate the possibility of wooing a wife. It was a long shot, and they all knew it. But Purá tucked his best T-shirt into a pair of denim shorts, buckled on a black leather belt and walked with Marcelo across a clearing where the Akuntsu chief was seated on a tiny wooden block.

[Leopolds Ghost]

3. "He instructed his pistoleros to distribute some "gifts": bags of sugar laced with rat poison."

THE AMAZON REGION IS AN AREA ABOUT 9/10THS THE SIZE OF THE CONTINENTAL UNITED STATES. It reaches into seven countries, but most of it is in Brazil. According to the book The Last Forest, by journalists Mark London and Brian Kelly, about 3 percent of the Amazon had been deforested in 1980, before the international movement to curb the Amazon's destruction gathered force. Now, about 20 percent is gone. A study released late last year by the Woods Hole Research Center -- in collaboration with the Amazon Institute for Environmental Research -- used deforestation estimates released by the Brazilian government to conclude that 55 percent of Brazil's portion of the Amazon would be cleared, logged or damaged by drought by 2030.

Inside the Amazon itself, not a lot of tears are being shed over the loss.

A lot of Brazilians look at places such as the United States or the British Empire and detect a common thread: Those countries cashed in on their resources to position themselves at the top of the world economy. Meanwhile, Brazil's cities are buckling under the weight of shantytown growth and violence. So, to a lot of Brazilians, it sounds like rank hypocrisy when outsiders tell them that their own resources should be off-limits to development.

A 2005 survey conducted by Brazil's top polling organization, Ibope, found that nearly three out of five Brazilians distrust the activities of international environmental groups. Nowhere is this sentiment expressed more forcefully than in Rondonia. A lot of the politicians in the young state come from its founding industries of logging and ranching, and exploiting the antipathy toward environmental groups makes political sense. Even though Funai is part of the Brazilian government, local ranchers considered the Guapore Contact Front an extension of an international environmental movement designed to make their lives hell. Without help from the ranchers, the team often tried to turn to the ranch hands, low-paid peones who for years lived in splintery shacks near the forest and often didn't share their bosses' contempt for Funai's work.

Through the older workers, the Funai team learned that the ranches in the immediate vicinity had a long history of violent conflict with local tribes. In 1985, a bloody battle between farmers and a tribe on a nearby Indian reserve launched public debate as to whether the government should extend the reserve and limit farming there. According to the peones, the owner of another nearby plot of forested land took note of the problem and decided that if no one knew about the Indians on his land, he'd be better off. He instructed his pistoleros to distribute some "gifts" around the Indian village in the woods: bags of sugar laced with rat poison. Later, the trigger men were sent back to the Indians' area with orders to shoot anyone who might have survived, and to raze and burn any vestiges of their village.

( ... )

Days later, the team returned to the site with Vincent, whose camera was rolling when Hercules Dalafini and a couple of his employees arrived with two police officers. Marcelo and Altair explained that Funai was authorized by the courts to be on the land. But Vincent, though he used to work for Funai, wasn't on the payroll anymore.

"I want him arrested," Hercules Dalafini said ...

( ... )

After much coaxing by Vincent, Maria Elena told him that she and her husband had been hired by the brothers to clear and burn the land in early 1996. She said gunmen had also been hired to kill three Indians believed to still be living on the land. She didn't know if the gunmen found the Indians or not. Shortly after she started working there, she said, she got scared, quit and moved to Xupinguaia.

Vincent knew the information was explosive, and he continued interviewing peones, corroborating Maria Elena's story. Some said they heard that the pistoleros had chased three Indians out of the area, perhaps killing them. Vincent began to sleep behind the door of the rented room, afraid someone might burst in during the night and try to do the same to him.

"You have to be careful," the teacher told him. "People are asking about you. Don't walk around alone at night."

( ... )

"Various reports confirm that in January of 1996 the rancher hired a contractor to clearcut the area in the month of January. The contractor entered the village shooting, pulled down and burned the longhouse, and destroyed the garden of corn and squash . . . Later, a bulldozer opened an access road for the deforestation and attempted to cover up the vestiges of the village . . ."

( ... )

According to J¿lio Olivar, editor of the regional newspaper, Folha do Sul, the state's elected representatives voted, 23 to 1, to declare Marcelo a persona non grata in Rondonia.

"They said he was an enemy of progress," Olivar said.

The very idea of an individual man living completely cut off from the rest of human civilization stirred debate in Rondonia. Some people subscribed to a romantic concept of "the noble savage," which essentially argues that any contact with someone who has never been exposed to civilization corrupts an unspoiled innocence. Others believed that denying him assistance to make his life easier was itself a form of cruelty.

( ... )

Altair had discovered a nearby piece of property where some trees had been cut without permission, and he noted the sign forged in metal over the ranch gate: Property of Amir Lando. He recognized the name as that of a senator in Brazil's national legislature. Because Lando had worked in the agency in charge of doling out the region's lands in the 1980s, he was prohibited from owning land there. Altair snapped a picture of the sign.

The senator denied owning the land, and the land records backed him up -- the land was registered in the name of a relative.

By the end of 2000, Marcelo decided he needed to take a break from the pressures of Rondonia, leaving the team in the hands of Altair. Shortly thereafter, Altair received some unwelcome news from officials in the national capital, Brasilia: His services were no longer required. If he wanted to remain with Funai, he would have to do so from a reassignment thousands of miles away. The editorial page of Folha do Sul linked the decision and Altair's public squabble with Lando, who was on the Senate appropriations committee in charge of federal budgeting decisions.

( ... )

DURING ANOTHER EXPEDITION, ALTAIR FOUND A SMALL BOW INSIDE THE INDIAN'S HUT. It was too small for the fluted arrows that most of the isolated Indians in Rondonia used to hunt pigs, monkeys and birds. It almost looked like a toy -- the same kind of bow that Purá's 5-year-old nephew often toted around to practice his aim by shooting at tree trunks.

The Funai team members thought about that bow for a long time. It couldn't have had a practical purpose.

"I think he must have had a child at some point," Altair said. "Or at least there had been a child in his tribe that he cared for. He couldn't have used the bow himself. It had to be a memento. Something made to keep a memory alive."

[rockymountaindem]

4. Thank you very much for posting this article, it was a fascinating read

Unfortunately, things seem to have changed very little since the old days, eh?

[Leopolds Ghost]

5. The more things change, the more they remain the same

"Still, you have to remember how primitive and lightly populated these
tribes are," a friend of mine said, as if to explain that they were on
the way out anyhow, despite our best efforts to preserve the rainforest.

Primitive? I'll say. Killing every man woman and child of the enemy,
like the white nations do? Drop the bomb... Exterminate all the brutes!

I posted extra excerpts because the article seems to be available
only to people who are registered at washpost. However, the video
is available to all, I do believe.

Remember, this guy does not speak any language known to anyone but his deceased relatives...

And the only white people he had ever seen before were deadly enemies who probably massacred his entire tribe.

Of course, the forest preserve that is set up to protect his and the other survivors' land will almost assuredly expire on the death of the last surviving tribal member, as it does here in the US. "Facts on the ground," as they say. Then, back to logging and ranching.

Interestingly, this was not the way of invading Bantu and European tribesmen, who regarded the Pygmy and Neolithic forbears with supernatural reverence, even when they were pushing back the boundaries of the forest. To this day, the Pygmy are considered the "natural owners of the land" farmed by the feudal societies of Rwanda and Uganda...

Here is how the article ends:

----------

On Marcelo's recommendation, and after reviewing all of the evidence the team had collected over a decade, the Brazilian government early last year announced that, to protect the Indian, it was declaring an area of more than 20,000 acres in southern Rondonia off-limits to any development. In a base station at the zone's perimeter, a small camp has been built for Funai members who regularly visit to make sure no one is violating the order. Team members have a similar camp between the tiny Kanoe and Akuntsu villages.

At night in the Funai camps, the moon struggles to cast the foliage in a weak silver glow, and the leaves shine as if they are stamped in a thin foil. If the moon is full, sickle-winged nightjars sing a call-and-answer in the trees, without regard for the luckless creatures who don't share their nocturnal tendencies.

During the rainy season, when the clouds blot out the moon, the darkness can seem suffocating in the huts where the explorers sleep. The nightjars are silent. Moisture penetrates even the most expertly woven palm thatch. Droplets form among the spiderwebs that line the undersides of the weave, gathering weight. Time is measured in irregular drips. Within a darkness so complete, it is easy to imagine oneself as perfectly isolated, to forget another team member is sleeping in another hammock just a few feet away.

Somewhere in the nearby woods, the team members believe, a man is sleeping under circumstances that are similar to theirs -- but entirely different, too. There is no one at his side.

His protected zone is an island of green in the middle of an ocean of red dirt fields and ranches. About the size of the island of Hong Kong, it has a population of one.

[Leopolds Ghost]

6. "Amazonian Angst" (graphic)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/graphic/2008/01/11/GR2008011101495.html?sid=ST2008011101748

[Heidi]

7. Absolutely fascinating. Thank you for posting this!

:kick:

[rockymountaindem]

8. Kick n/t

[Leopolds Ghost]

9. I was too busy to check this thread, but...

Here's a bump for anyone who missed it.

[IdesOfOctober]

10. Where do you live?

You've got to visit the http://www.nmai.si.edu/">Native American Museum's ethnology exhibits. A very good friend took me there, and it's stunning.

Ides