May 30, 2008: Uncontacted Indigenous People

[DanaC]

Because he hasn't been there? Because he hasn't contacted the tribe? But there have been a hundered tribes discovered before and a hundred times it has been the case. But that past history doesn't mean that he knows what the lifestyle is like about these people?

If you check the record of such contact you'll find it mainly went pretty badly for the contacted tribes. On the whole they did not march forward into the white heat of technology....

Also, if you think that anthropology has in any way reached a consensus on most of this stuff you are sadly mistaken. There have been near fist fights and decades long feuds over subtle distinctions of societal development in these tribes. There have also been new generations of observers who have brought wholly different techniques and observations to tribes who we previously thought we understood.


[eta] if you went to a convention of those anthropologists who've documented the first contacts you are talking about and tried to tell them any assumptions could be made on the grounds of what they already knew, you'd be laughed out of the building. Just a thought.

[Coign]

Sorry, I said I will quit posting but Dana, unlike Shawnee, is bringing up interesting arguments and ones I can talk about and discuss.

While posting and reading more about this tribe I did come across this article and did want to discuss the ramifications behind it.

Brazil's National Indian Foundation believes there may be as many as 68 "uncontacted" groups around Brazil, although only 24 have been officially confirmed.

Anthropologists say almost all of these tribes know about western civilization and have sporadic contact with prospectors, rubber tappers and loggers, but choose to turn their backs on civilization, usually because they have been attacked.

"It's a choice they made to remain isolated or maintain only occasional contacts, but these tribes usually obtain some modern goods through trading with other Indians," said Bernardo Beronde, an anthropologist who works in the region.

Brazilian officials once tried to contact such groups. Now they try to protectively isolate them.

The four tribes monitored by Meirelles include perhaps 500 people who roam over an area of about 1.6 million acres (630,000 hectares).

He said that over the 20 years he has been working in the area, the number of "malocas," or grass-roofed huts, has doubled, suggesting that the policy of isolation is working and that populations are growing.

Remaining isolated, however, gets more complicated by the day.

Loggers are closing in on the Indians' homeland — Brazil's environmental protection agency said Friday it had shut down 28 illegal sawmills in Acre state, where these tribes are located. And logging on the Peruvian border has sent many Indians fleeing into Brazil, Meirelles said.

"On the Brazilian side we don't have logging yet, but I'd like to emphasize the 'yet,'" he said.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5i...OgH_wD9105MUG0

I quoted what I felt was pertinent and will agree with Dana that "past" first encounters have a 50% chance of killing off the tribe.

But I think we are all working from partial knowledge here. Which nation is doing the contacting? Have steps been taken to insure a first contact is not going to wipe them out due to a common cold? (Easily prevented in a controlled situation, don't let sick people make contact.) Is it a nation at all making the contact or is it illegal loggers and undesirables that have no interest in the tribe in the first place?

That I don't know. But I am arguing that you need to make that contact. You need to give those people a choice. Give them as much information as they are willing to listen to.

I am all for letting a civilization turned down society and eventually doom themselves if they choose. But we are not the people to say, "Well they would just be better off without us." I say we can not make that life-altering decision for them.

And lastly.

Originally Posted by DanaC

Also, if you think that anthropology has in any way reached a consensus on most of this stuff you are sadly mistaken. There have been near fist fights and decades long feuds over subtle distinctions of societal development in these tribes. There have also been new generations of observers who have brought wholly different techniques and observations to tribes who we previously thought we understood.

You are correct.

Originally Posted by DanaC

[eta] if you went to a convention of those anthropologists who've documented the first contacts you are talking about and tried to tell them any assumptions could be made on the grounds of what they already knew, you'd be laughed out of the building. Just a thought.

You are wrong. That is why anthropology is a science and psychiatry is an art. You CAN make assumptions in science. They are called theories and until disproven they are the way the world works. But you call it a theory because science CAN be disproven and no one debates against that.

Psychiatry on the other hand is an art. There are more exceptions than there are rules.

And although I do hate responding to Shawnee, I actually was shooting for a "low" number when I said hundreds. In this modern day, as the article above states, there thought to be as many as 64 currently uncontacted tribes. And my hundreds were to include tribes since we started gathering information on the unknown neighbor over the hill.

[Shawnee123]

I'm not going to respond to coign, except...poopyhead!