Post date: Jan 31, 2011 11:4:47 PM
Photographs of uncontacted Indians in the border of Brazil and Peru are released by Survival International to draw attention to the risk the NGO says they face from illegal logging operations in the area.
AMAZON, BRAZIL SURVIVAL INTERNATIONAL HANDOUT - Amazon Indians from one of the world's last uncontacted tribes have been photographed from the air, with striking images released on Monday (January 31) in an effort to raise awareness on illegal logging in the border of Peru and Brazil.
The pictures unveiled by Survival International, a London-based indigenous rights group, were taken last year by the Brazilian government's agency of indigenous affairs (FUNAI) and show Indian men painted in bright red and black pigments in the middle of the tropical rainforest.One photo portrays three children and two men looking and pointing at the aircraft as they hold spears, bows and arrows near a thatched hut and baskets filled with papayas and manioc from their crops.
Survival International says the group is endangered by illegal loggers who are pushing isolated Peruvian Indians further into the Brazilian Amazon, which could trigger tribal conflicts.
The contact with loggers could also spark deaths and bring diseases into the community, threatening the Indians' lives, the group says.
The tribe is settled close to the headwaters of the Envira River in the Brazilian Amazon, near the Peruvian border, a region where more than 50 uncontacted tribes, out of the estimated 100 worldwide, are thought to live.
Such tribes are increasingly at risk from development, especially on the Peruvian side which has been slower than Brazil to recognize protected areas for indigenous people. Peru has also been criticized for letting mining and oil companies operate in remote forest areas, endangering the Indians' survival.
The first photos of this uncontacted tribe, which showed Indians poised to fire arrows at the aircraft, were released in 2008.