Uncontacted Tribes Don't Need the "Protection" of Western Anthropologists

[Judi Lynn]

Uncontacted Tribes Don't Need the "Protection" of Western Anthropologists
Saturday, 04 July 2015 00:00
By Stephen Corry, Truthout | Op-Ed

US anthropologists Robert Walker and Kim Hill recently published an article in Science to argue that governments are violating their responsibility to "protect" isolated tribes if they eschew contact with them. Their argument threatens to undercut advances in indigenous rights that have painstakingly evolved over a generation.

Walker and Hill show how first contacts with isolated Amazon tribes result in massive population decline, but they nevertheless go on to claim it's "a violation of governmental responsibility" for governments to "refuse authorized, well-planned contacts." The magazine, which often employs the tropes of the "brutal savage" in its portrayal of tribal peoples, declined to print the critical comments that the anthropologists' article elicited.

Brazil used to have the policy that Walker and Hill suggest: Its government instigated contacts with indigenous people in order to "open up" the Amazon and exploit its resources between the 1960s and 1980s. It wanted to "pacify" the tribes so they would stop resisting the theft of their lands. Antonio Cotrim, one of the fieldworkers, ended up saying he could no longer stomach being a gravedigger for the indigenous people he had befriended. Apoena Meirelles, one of the most experienced experts on indigenous peoples, said the tribes soon began "the first steps down the long road to misery, hunger and ... prostitution." Meirelles added, "I would rather die fighting ... in defense of their lands and their right to live, than see them reduced to beggars tomorrow."

From "Pacification" to Protection

By the late 1980s, the department charged with Brazilian indigenous affairs, FUNAI, had shifted its policy away from "pacification" and started trying to stop the invasion of indigenous territories in the first place.

More:
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/31658-uncontacted-tribes-don-t-need-the-protection-of-western-anthropologists

[Judi Lynn]

1. Scientists must let world's most isolated tribes make own decisions

Scientists must let world's most isolated tribes make own decisions

Call to initiate “controlled contact” with indigenous peoples in the Amazon would violate their rights and threaten their lives

David Hill
Tuesday 7 July 2015 20.35 EDT

Usually the indigenous peoples living in the remotest Amazon only draw international media attention if certain kinds of photos or film footage emerge, as in mid-2014, or they raid a village or, tragically, kill someone, as happened on 1 May. Many media reports misinform as much as inform: factual errors, no context and all kinds of sensationalism. “Lost tribe!” “First contact!”

This time it’s a series of articles in the US journal Science - and in particular the editorial by two US anthropologists - that has sparked interest. The gist of the editorial is that governments, above all Brazil’s and Peru’s, should u-turn on their “leave them alone strategies” and initiate “controlled contact” with “isolated indigenous societies across lowland South America” - sometimes erroneously called “uncontacted” - who have “limited to no contact with the outside world.” They must do this, argue Kim Hill, from Arizona State University, and Robert Walker, from the University of Missouri, “only after conceiving a well-organized plan” requiring a “qualified team of cultural translators and health care professionals that is committed to staying on site for more than a year.”

What is Hill & Walker’s reasoning? Mainly because of what they call the “isolated populations’” “intermittent hostile and sporadic interaction with the outside world”, because of their vulnerability to diseases and epidemics “compounded by demographic variability and inbreeding”, because their territories are being invaded by “miners, loggers, and hunters”, because governments can’t protect them, and because it is “unlikely” “they would choose isolation if they had full information.” Their conclusion is that “isolated populations are not viable in the long term” and that “controlled contact with isolated peoples is a better option than a no-contact policy” or uncontrolled, accidental contact.

Let me make clear the momentousness of what Hill & Walker are proposing and just how high the stakes are here: indigenous peoples in the Amazon who suddenly come into sustained contact with “outsiders” are at immense risk. It is common, following the transmission of diseases, for many of them to die. This can happen in the first few weeks and months, or it can continue for years. Just a few examples from Peru - which this article will focus on - in recent decades are the “Matsigenka-Nanti” (between 30%-50% have died since contact in the 1970s), the Nahua (almost 50% in the 1980s) and the “Chitonahua” (approximately 25% since the 1990s).

More:
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/andes-to-the-amazon/2015/jul/07/scientists-worlds-most-isolated-tribes-decisions