I’ve spent time with many indigenous peoples in the Amazon rainforest.
On a visit to one community, early one morning,
a family invited me to go on a short walk with them to their hunting area.
“It’s not far,” they told me.
“It’s just over there!”
The short walk turned out to be a six-hour hike at tribal pace,
which is fast.
Just before midday,
drenched from the heavy rain,
we arrived at a beautiful patch of forest
the family know like the back of their hand.
Once we had collected some fruit and found a good spot for some fishing,
Pire’i, the father of the family and the community leader,
started to tell me about his uncontacted relatives.
They live deep in the forest, avoiding contact with outsiders.
They’re nomadic hunter-gatherers,
always on the move,
hunting, fishing, and collecting fruits and honey.
“Let them live!”, Pire’i said.
“We must let them live.”
In our interconnected world, some find it hard to believe.
But yes, they exist.
More than 100 uncontacted tribes around the world.
From the Amazon rainforest
to the arid plains of Paraguay’s Chaco region
to the Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean and the remote forests of West Papua.
I believe in a world
where uncontacted tribes are allowed to survive and thrive.
They are our contemporaries
and a vitally important part of humankind’s diversity.
They know their environments intimately.
Every valley, stream, and trail are inscribed on their mental map.
Over thousands of years,
they have developed ways of life
which are entirely self-sufficient and extraordinarily diverse.
Awá Indians in the Brazilian Amazon, for example, have shown me
how their uncontacted relatives use the resin of the maçaranduba tree
to make fire to light their houses and to hunt at night.
Uncontacted Kawahiva Indians build intricate ladders up trees
to collect honey from bees’ nests,
and they make traps to catch fish in the streams by their camps.
One uncontacted man known as “the Man of the Hole”
digs deep pits in which he places sharp spikes to capture large prey.
Uncontacted tribes have an acute understanding of their environments
and unique solutions to sustainable living.
Many of the drugs used in Western medicine, like morphine,
originate with tribal people.
Uncontacted tribes’ contacted relatives have shared
some of that knowledge with the world,
and it has saved millions of lives.
Uncontacted tribes are the best guardians of their environments.
Evidence proves that their territories
are by far the strongest barriers to deforestation.
Look at satellite imagery of the Amazon, and you’ll find time and again
that uncontacted tribes’ territories are islands of green
amid seas of deforestation.
The best way to prevent the destruction of the Amazon rainforest
is to campaign for the land rights of uncontacted tribes.
They depend on their land, and their land depends on them.
Their respect for their land and their deep connection to it
can be seen in their religious and shamanic rituals,
and in their everyday lives.
They take only what they need from their forest.
They move their crops from one area to another
to allow the soil to replenish,
and they carefully control their hunting zones
so that animal numbers remain healthy.
Yanomami Shaman and leader Davi Kopenawa, known as the Dalai Lama of the rainforest,
asked, “Why is it taking so long to believe
that if we hurt nature, we hurt ourselves?
We are not watching the world from outside.
We are not separate from it.”
And indeed, in many places,
uncontacted tribes coexist with nature at an extraordinary level.
Take this uncontacted community
in the heart of the Amazon Uncontacted Frontier,
a large region straddling the Peru-Brazil border,
home to the more uncontacted tribes than anywhere else on Earth.
We can see a healthy, thriving community
with baskets full of papaya and manioc fresh from their gardens.
Their bodies are painted red and black,
with paints they make from annatto seeds and the fruit from the genipapo tree.
And they have metal pots and knives,
which they’ve probably obtained through inter-tribal trading.
Here, and elsewhere,
uncontacted Indians point arrows up at passing planes
and leave crossed spears on forest paths,
to show that they don’t want contact with outsiders.
The uncontacted Yanomami Indians, on the Brazil-Venezuela border,
also appear to be in good health.
We can see their yano, their large communal house,
where each square section is home to a different family,
where they hang their hammocks, store their food,
light fires to keep warm at night.
Contacted Yanomami have told us
that they use the central area for feasts and games,
and that they use over 500 plants
for food, medicine, house building, and other artifacts.
And on the other side of the world, on a small island in the Indian Ocean,
live the uncontacted Sentinelese tribe.
Again, from a distance, they appear to be robust and healthy.
They hunt and gather in their forest, and they fish in the coastal waters.
They make narrow canoes which they propel through the water with poles.
They are the most isolated people on Earth.
But in many places, there’s a darker story,
a story of genocide.
Some uncontacted tribes’ land is being stolen
by governments, companies, and individuals keen to make quick profit
from the resources the tribes have so carefully looked after for millennia.
Their land is being invaded by loggers, miners, ranchers, oil and gas prospectors,
road and dam construction teams,
drug traffickers, missionaries, and others.
It’s nothing new.
Whole tribes were wiped out
by the European colonization of the Americas and Australia.
During the gold rush, the rubber boom,
the decades of forced contact expeditions up until the late 1980s,
yet more tribes were wiped out by genocide or violence
and others lost up to 90% of their population within a year or two.
And it continues today.
Yet, more tribes are being wiped out by genocidal violence
at the hands of the invaders,
and by diseases like flu and measles to which they have no resistance.
Of course, it’s illegal.
Uncontacted tribes’ right to live undisturbed on their land
is enshrined in law.
Uncontacted tribes are the most vulnerable peoples on the planet.
They face catastrophe if their land is not protected.
Jakarewyj and Amakaria, sisters,
hunter-gatherer nomads of the Awá tribe,
were forced to make contact with outsiders in 2014.
They had been uncontacted for decades,
but more recently, they found themselves surrounded by loggers in their forest,
and they had caught respiratory diseases which were killing them.
They found themselves forced to abandon their nomadic lives,
forced to make contact with their Awá neighbors
living in a contacted, settled village.
When I visited that village a few months later,
I was shocked and saddened
to find the sisters lying motionless in her hammocks,
too weak to eat or speak.
They were dying of tuberculosis,
a common killer of recently contacted tribal people.
I took this photo to show what was happening
and to generate pressure in their favor.
Amazingly, after thousands of people
pushed the Brazilian government to provide urgent health care,
the sisters recovered.
And soon after, they returned to their uncontacted lives in their forest,
covering their tracks as they went, so that no one could follow them.
The sisters’ story strikes me as a great illustration
of how many tribal people are so determined to live on their land,
and how people around the world really can make a difference.
But it doesn’t always end like that.
In many cases, following forced contact, the Indians end up dead.
This man is believed to be
the only survivor of a tribe massacred by ranchers decades ago.
The photo was taken as government agents approached the man,
and he backed off, refusing contact.
He lives on his own in a patch of forest, and he’s known as the “Last of his Tribe.”
When he dies, a whole people will be wiped out, forever.
Cattle ranchers massacred nearly all the uncontacted Akuntsu Indians
a few decades ago,
and they then bulldozed their homes to the ground,
trying to erase all traces of their village.
Soon after that forced contact, only seven Akuntsu survived,
and today, they number just four.
Within a few decades, they will be extinct.
And these are the last of the Kawahiva tribe.
(Video starts) (tribe members speaking Kagwahiva)
(Video ends)
The footage was filmed by government agents
during a chance encounter with the Indians.
They’re completely surrounded by loggers and ranchers,
in one of the most violent parts of the Amazon.
Attacks and disease have killed their relatives,
and their genocide will be complete
if what remains of their land is not protected.
But if Brazil’s government acts fast, they can survive.
Indigenous people who have recently come into contact
with mainstream society
tell harrowing tales of attacks.
Some Sapanawa Indians made contact with government agents a few years ago,
after many of their relatives were killed.
This is the moment of first contact.
(Video starts)
(Video ends)
In the Peruvian Amazon,
Jorge Murunahua was shot in the eye during first contact with his people.
(Video starts)
JM: When the loggers made contact with us, we came out of the forest.
That was when the disease came. We didn’t know what a cold was then.
Half of us died. My aunt died. My nephew died.
Half of my people died.
(Video ends)
Sarah Shenker: For all we know,
an uncontacted tribe could be being attacked right now, as we speak.
Imagine being completely surrounded
by people who would prefer you didn’t exist.
What would you do?
Would you confront the invaders,
well aware that they’re heavily armed and unafraid to shoot and kill?
Would you succumb and let your world be ripped away from you?
Or would you run and hide,
fleeing to protect your families and fight for your future?
I believe in a world
where uncontacted tribes are allowed to survive and thrive,
and I hope you do, too.
So why care?
Because uncontacted tribes
are a vitally important part of humankind’s diversity.
Because, just like you and me,
they have the right to choose how they live.
Because our consumption
of wooden furniture, of petrol for cars, of gold jewellery
is fueling their genocide.
And in case that’s not enough, what about the health of our planet?
How about our future, and the future of coming generations?
The best guardians of the most biodiverse places on Earth,
uncontacted tribes are absolutely vital
in our fight against climate change and environmental degradation.
The solution is clear:
uphold the law and protect their lands.
So where do we go from here?
Well, we need to act, fast.
The pressure on uncontacted tribes’ land is intensifying.
I’ve seen ranchers call uncontacted Indians “dirty” and “lazy.”
I’ve heard politicians deny their very existence.
And I’ve worked with indigenous leaders
who receive death threats simply for speaking out
for their uncontacted relatives’ right to live.
Some say uncontacted tribes are doomed.
That their disappearance is inevitable.
That they’re backward and primitive relics of a remote past.
And we must make contact with them
to bring them into the so-called modern world.
No
That simply won’t work.
Entering uncontacted tribes’ land and forcing contact is fatal.
Fortunately, government policies now order
the protection of uncontacted tribes’ land
for their exclusive use.
We must make sure they stick to their word.
Uncontacted tribes are well aware of the existence of the outside world.
If they want to make contact, they can, and they will.
So we must guarantee their right to live as they choose.
It’s a right enshrined in national constitutions.
It’s a right enshrined in international law.
It’s a right enshrined by the United Nations.
And surely, it’s a right enshrined in human morality.
I believe in a world
where uncontacted tribes are allowed to survive and thrive.
For almost 50 years,
Survival International has led the global campaign
for uncontacted tribes’ rights.
We won’t give up until their lands are protected.
We fight against all odds,
and alongside contacted Indians, we’ve secured
countless successes for uncontacted tribes.
From the creation of the Yanomami Park
– the largest forested indigenous territory in the world –
to the eviction of loggers from the Awá indigenous territory
to the encouragement of binational government cooperation
to tackle this urgent situation.
The only way to continue to ensure the survival of uncontacted tribes
is to catalyze a groundswell of public opinion in their favor.
You can be the change uncontacted tribes so desperately need.
Let’s push companies to reject projects that will harm uncontacted tribes.
Let’s encourage the UN and other international bodies
to take a more urgent stand.
Let’s pressurize governments to protect uncontacted tribes’ land.
It works.
Together, we really can make a difference.
We can give the most vulnerable peoples on the planet
a chance to survive and thrive.
As Pire’i so passionately asked,
we can, and we must let them live.
Thank you.
(Applause)
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