Saturday, February 5, 2011

Uncontacted Tribes

Happened to read an article about these people, title being: "Astonishing new photos of one of the world's last uncontacted tribes" and more than once I felt emotional reading about these people and the kind of struggle they encounter in the present scenario. Here are a few glimpse of what I read... (please, please read or watch the video)

Uncontacted tribes are people who have no peaceful contact with anyone in the mainstream or dominant society. There are about 100 uncontacted tribes in the world. New photos obtained (on 31st January 2011) by Survival International show uncontacted Indians in never-seen-before detail. The Indians are living in Brazil, near the Peruvian border. The tribe’s survival is in serious jeopardy as an influx of illegal loggers invades the Peru side of the border.

Although most invasions of uncontacted tribes’ lands are prompted by the desire of loggers, oil companies, cattle ranchers and so forth to take the tribes’ lands and resources, governments sometimes try to make contact for their own reasons. In Brazil, the Indian affairs department FUNAIOne of this unit’s most extraordinary contacts took place in a remote corner of Brazil’s Amazon on 15 October 1996. After months of watching and waiting, a small group of Korubo Indians overcame their fear and slowly emerged from the forest to meet the FUNAI team. The tension of this historic first moment was captured on film by Sydney Possuelo, the head of the FUNAI has long had a small unit responsible for initiating contact, as a last resort, with remote peoples who are at imminent risk of an uncontrolled and possibly disastrous collision with the outside world. unit. Unlike so many other first contacts, this initial encounter was peaceful, and no Korubo died as a result. The constant incursions of outsiders meant they constantly had to move camp. Each sudden move meant the loss of the crops they had planted, and often their precious possessions such as cooking pots and tools.

"We ran from one place to another. It looked like the bulldozer was following us. I had to leave my tools, my bow, my rope to run faster. At last, the bulldozer left in another direction. When I realised that the bulldozer had gone in another direction, I found a trunk with a beehive in it, and I took the honey. We thought that the bulldozer could see us. We had planted many crops in the garden [melon, beans, pumpkin and corn] because it was summer time. We thought that the bulldozer had seen our garden and came to eat the fruit – and to eat us too. The bulldozer opened a path up right beside our garden, that’s why we were so scared of it. We have always seen airplanes, but we did not know that it was something useful of the cojñone [white people, literally strange people]. We also saw long clouds behind the plane which frightened us, because we thought that something might fall on us. When we saw these big planes with this white smoke behind, we thought they were stars.’
"

One of the Murunahua survivors, Jorge, who lost an eye during first contact, told a Survival researcher, "The disease came when the loggers made contact with us, although we didn’t know what a cold was then. The disease killed us. Half of us died. My aunt died, my nephew died. Half of my people died."
The Jarawa tribe of the Andaman islands saw their land split in two when the islands administration built a highway through their territory. It is now the principal road through the islands. There is not only a constant stream of settlers travelling in buses and taxis, but the road acts as a conduit for tourists, and for poachers targeting the Jarawa’s reserve (which, unlike the rest of the islands, is still covered in rainforest). Jarawa children are often seen by the side of the road, and there is some evidence of the sexual exploitation of Jarawa women.

The most isolated tribes in the world: Perhaps no people on Earth remain more genuinely isolated than the Sentinelese. They are thought to be directly descended from the first human populations to emerge from Africa, and have probably lived in the Andaman Islands for up to 55,000 years. The fact that their language is so different even from other Andaman islanders suggests that they have had little contact with other people for thousands of years. In the days after the cataclysmic tsunami of 2004, as the full scale of the destruction and horror wreaked upon the islands of the Indian Ocean became apparent, the fate of the tribal peoples of the Andaman Islands remained a mystery. Yet when a helicopter flew low over the island, a Sentinelese man rushed out on to the beach, aiming his arrow at the pilot in a gesture that clearly said, ‘We don’t want you here’. Alone of the tens of millions of people affected by the disaster, the Sentinelese needed no help from anyone.

Outsiders view on Uncontacted tribes:
‘You could smell where they [the Jarawa] had stood. They smell so bad, don’t clean themselves. We have to go into the forest for cane and leaves. We take dogs, they go ahead and if they smell Jarawa they come running back.’ - Andaman islands colonist, India

‘Indians are worse than animals. They’re not even good to eat.’- Brazilian rancher
‘If I was in authority, I would exterminate all the Yanomami. I would leave one alive to exhibit to the public in a zoo.’ - Brazilian hotel owner

Courtesy: www.uncontactedtribes.org

I wonder we hear, see, tolerate all these and many more and we call it "Civilization". You know, we all live a very pathetic life as we could not able to save our own mankind. Why are we becoming more and more shrewd in life? Are we not supposed to show humanity? Where are we heading towards?

God, please please save this innocent people from these so called civilized people. What a pathetic prayer this is!

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