Uncontacted tribes were in the world spotlight exactly one year ago when photos were released showing Indians, deep in the Brazilian Amazon, aiming bows and arrows at a government aircraft circling overhead. “The photos made headlines around the world and threw uncontacted tribes into the international spotlight, provoking public outrage at the threats to their land, livelihoods and lives,” said Survival , an itinternational indigenous-rights group based in the UK. “In spite of this, however,
uncontacted tribes around the world are facing extinction,” the British-based organization said in a report, “Uncontacted
Tribes Face Extinction,” published on the anniversary of last year’s photos. “Governments, companies and
others ignore their rights, and invade and destroy their land with impunity. The report exposes the plight
of the world’s most
threatened uncontacted tribes. They live in five locations in
three South American
countries: Paraguay, Brazil and
Peru. They are just a few of the more than 100 uncontacted tribes known to exist
worldwide, in South America, the Indian Ocean, and on the island of New Guinea, Survival said. “Uncontacted tribes face two
principal threats to their
survival,” the report says. “By far the greatest is their
lack of immunity to common
Western diseases such as
influenza, chicken pox,
measles, and a host of
respiratory diseases. “Even where ‘first contact’
between an isolated tribe and
outsiders is carefully
managed, it is common for significant numbers of tribespeople to die in the months following contact. “Where such encounters are
not managed, with medical plans in place, the entire tribe, or a large proportion of it, can be wiped out.” Such catastrophes have
occurred repeatedly in the Amazon, and not just in the distant past: in 1996, for example, at least half the Murunahua Indians died after they were contacted by illegal mahogany loggers, according to Survival. The other key threat is simply violence: in several of the
cases outlined in the report the tribespeople face gangs of heavily-armed loggers who are likely to shoot them on sight, Survival said.
The five most threatened
uncontacted tribes are: -Indians of the Pardo River,Brazil -The Awá, Brazil
-Indians between the Napo,Peru -Indians of the Envira
River, Peru -The Ayoreo-Totobiegosode, Paraguay .
“These groups are all
experiencing the invasion of their lands–by loggers, ranchers, colonists and oil companies–and all are at grave risk of being decimated by diseases to which they have no immunity,” Survival said in a news release announcing the
report.

Photo 1 -Photo of the uncontacted tribe photographed last year in the Brazilian Amazon, near the Peruvian border.
Photo 2 and 3 -Members of theParaguayan Ayoreo-
Totobiegosode group the
moment they were
contacted for the first
time, in 2004.
Photo 4 -Uncontacted Mashco-Piro Indian woman spotted from the air, S.E.Peru, 2007.
(Photo credit) - Gleison Miranda,Heinz Plenge Pardo,Frankfurt Zoological
Society,GAT/Survival.
Source - http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/