Amazonian tribe makes first contact with the outside world

The Brazilian government has announced that it made a rare contact with members of a rare, isolated tribe in the Amazon, not far from the border with Peru. The indigenous tribe has reportedly suffered violent attack recently, as well as exposure to disease.

The Amazon region, especially the Brazil parts of the region, is home to numerous tribes that live by hunting and gathering and have made little to no contact with the outside world. There are believed to be four such tribes in the Brazilian part of the Amazon, and two on the Peruvian side.

This particular group of indigenous tribe members consisted only seven people, all of whom spoke a language that is believed to be part of the Pano linguistic group. The group crossed into western Brazil from Peru back in June and made contact with another indigenous settlement.

The settlement they contacted promptly notified the Brazilian government, according to Brazil’s National Indian Foundation (FUNAI). The government then sent out a group of interpreters to investigate the situation.

The members of the tribe had contracted the flu and were quickly treated at a government outpost deep in the Amazon before eventually returning home, FUNAI said in a statement this week.

“In talks conducted with the group through interpreters, they said they had suffered acts of violence carried out by non-indigenous peoples at the head of the Envira River in Peru,” it said.

The Brazilian part of the Amazon region is thought to be home to as many as 77 groups such as the one that recently made contact, which was the first significant contact with any isolated tribe in almost twenty years. The last time was back in 1996 when FUNAI made contact with members of a tribe in an area to the north called the Korubo tribe.

Read more about the story at The Guardian.