Figure above: Public domain, Google.com
The Fate of Uncontacted Tribes
This post concerns alternative responses to the status and future of uncontacted, “unconquered”, indigenous Indians, particularly, those surviving in the tropical forests of South America. In 1973 and 1976, I trekked into what I considered to be rigorous Latin American terrain to contact indigenous Indian groups. One of the tribes I reached, in Costa Rica’s Talamancas mountain range, the BriBri, had been converted to Catholicism by missionaries living several miles from native lands. A young woman carrying a baby less than one month old crossed my path on her way to find a priest. Only men in this cultural group spoke Spanish. Nonetheless, this proud young mother acknowledged me with a smile and without fear. The second tribe, the Yagua, inhabited territory up the Rio Negro, rivulet of the Colombian Amazon, living in conditions appearing as close to original as one might expect several miles upriver from Leticia. Until I read The Unconquered, by Scott Wallace, I did not realize how very tame my excursions had been. Scott and 29 other men traveled through rainforest and tributaries in search of “People of the Arrow”, experiencing conditions that probably approximated those encountered by soldiers in Viet Nam.
The Brazilian goverment's, Department of Isolated Indians, National Indian Foundation (FUNAI),
funded the flecheiros expedition, a
venture having multiple functions. On
the one hand, Scott and a National Geographic Society photographer documented the natural and the
human, the bizarre and the banal, the expertise and the foibles. Sydney Possuelo, ex-official of the Brazilian
government, and a charismatic, idealistic, virtually surreal, personality, is
the central character of Scott’s drama.
Central casting was comprised primarily of acculturated men of Indian
descent familiar with the Amazon’s rigors and requisite survival skills
including expertise in building dugout canoes.
National Geographic’s involvement necessarily implied tacit or overt
support of the expedition's goals and objectives, in particular, gathering
information needed to insure the tribe’s apparent decision to remain
independent of influences beyond their federally protected forests.
Possuelo’s, and, subsequently,
Scott’s, dream of sustaining the pristine existence of this and other
“unconquered” human groups is shared by conservation agencies such as Survival
International, a non-governmental organization, operating in the UK since the
late 1960s. Supported politically and
programmatically by the United Nations, and, financially, by private parties,
Survival International and activists such as Possuelo, have built a firewall
against proposals and, in some cases, direct efforts, to consider alternative,
some would say, more realistic, strategies to insure protection of indigenous
tribes’ rights to self-determination.
One of these oppositional voices is that of John Terborgh, a Duke
University professor, and frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books.
Terborgh’s review (NYRB, April 6, 2012) of Scott’s book
highlighted an ongoing conflict among those committed to the preservation of
uncontacted tribes. In brief, Terborgh
believes that assimilation is inevitable and that indigenous groups need to be,
and, deserve to be, assisted during their acculturation transitions. Responding to a letter from Stephen Corry,
Director of Survival International (NYRB,
May 24, 2012), criticizing his review, Terborgh stated: “We live in a world of
accelerating change…that leaves no good options for people who require
isolation.” I propose an alternative to
these radically different approaches based on the philosophy and practice of
community-based conservation projects.
This method would permit judicious induction of contact between
conservationists and “pre-modern” tribes (Terborgh's term).
In a recent book chapter, former colleagues
and I outlined a nine-stage model describing one bottom-up (“horizontal”)
approach to forest management by indigenous and other local settlements. The first stage involves contacting
“community leaders and elders to "catylize" informal communication with village
inhabitants, providing opportunities to openly and candidly discuss the
significance of their resources and benefits to be gained from cooperative and
participatory initiatives for conservation of their natural resources”. This method can be modified for use with
uncontacted tribes by a process similar to gradual, “systematic desensitization”
of target groups to smaller and smaller distances between tribal members and a
limited number of conservationists trained in the process. Following procedures devised by clinical
psychologists, the conservationists approaching an uncontacted unit would retreat
when any sign of discomfort or aggression was observed. This technique would be repeated at various
intervals (days, or, possibly, weeks), until one or more member of the tribe
moved in the conservationists’ direction, initiating contact.
The desensitization treatment, a
"successive approximation" approach, has a very high success rate when employed
to mitigate human phobias (e.g., snakes, heights), and there is no a priori reason to expect failure during
initial contact attempts with indigenous Indian groups. The suggested approach is particularly
advantageous since decisions to contact remain with members of a tribe, and
details of the process can be adjusted to each situation. Access to uncontacted indigenous tribes would
require negotiation with regional and central government officials, as well as
other stakeholders. However, a formal
proposal devised by one or more community-based organization would, at minimum,
introduce a moderating and, potentially, mitigating, agency into what is
currently a standoff between interested parties. In addition, implementation of the
negotiation process would forge relationships among several entities and their
networks, both bottom-up, and, top-down, multi-scale associations that do not
currently exist informally, or, formally.
Reply from Scott Wallace 1/12/2013:
Dear Clara,
I appreciate your thoughtful post, which I have now read. Thank you for
reading my book and for your comments.
Upon reading your recommendations, I was struck by how similar they are to
the methods traditionally employed by Brazil's Indian Protection Service,
SPI, and later by FUNAI through much of the 20th century, up until
Possuelo led the movement to reform the policy in the mid-1980s. SPI and
FUNAI contact teams did exactly what you prescribe, in establishing
contact posts in proximity to tribal clearings. Their efforts at contact
were often prolonged affairs that took months and even years to bring
about definitive contact.
I have written about this history in some detail in The Unconquered. These
were efforts guided by the same humanitarian principles that motivate your
own suggestions. SPI and FUNAI field agents (sertanistas) also believed
that "controlled contact" with their trained and idealistic personnel was
far preferable to the violence and mayhem that attended forced contact by
settlers, loggers, gold prospectors, road builders along an inexorably
advancing frontier.
Possuelo and most of his colleagues found that their efforts in the end
were messy affairs that inevitably resulted in high rates of mortality
despite their best intentions. Perhaps there is a better way, but I don't
think we've found it. The kind of approach you describe would require far
more resources than any government or international body seems to have the
will to devote to the protection of these populations. Contact in the deep
jungle is a complicated proposition, requiring far more logistical support
than you might imagine. Still, I think that one of Possuelo's primary
objectives is to buy time to figure out better solutions than any that
have so far been elaborated or put into practice. The debate is an
important one.
I appreciate your thoughtful post, which I have now read. Thank you for
reading my book and for your comments.
Upon reading your recommendations, I was struck by how similar they are to
the methods traditionally employed by Brazil's Indian Protection Service,
SPI, and later by FUNAI through much of the 20th century, up until
Possuelo led the movement to reform the policy in the mid-1980s. SPI and
FUNAI contact teams did exactly what you prescribe, in establishing
contact posts in proximity to tribal clearings. Their efforts at contact
were often prolonged affairs that took months and even years to bring
about definitive contact.
I have written about this history in some detail in The Unconquered. These
were efforts guided by the same humanitarian principles that motivate your
own suggestions. SPI and FUNAI field agents (sertanistas) also believed
that "controlled contact" with their trained and idealistic personnel was
far preferable to the violence and mayhem that attended forced contact by
settlers, loggers, gold prospectors, road builders along an inexorably
advancing frontier.
Possuelo and most of his colleagues found that their efforts in the end
were messy affairs that inevitably resulted in high rates of mortality
despite their best intentions. Perhaps there is a better way, but I don't
think we've found it. The kind of approach you describe would require far
more resources than any government or international body seems to have the
will to devote to the protection of these populations. Contact in the deep
jungle is a complicated proposition, requiring far more logistical support
than you might imagine. Still, I think that one of Possuelo's primary
objectives is to buy time to figure out better solutions than any that
have so far been elaborated or put into practice. The debate is an
important one.
Thanks very much,
Scott
Hyperlink to Wallace's The Unconquered webpage:
Amazon.com site for The Unconquered:
http://www.amazon.com/The-
.
.