Around 500 different groups of Indians still in the vast forest of the Amazon. Some have never had contact with the outside world. Last year, a small prop plane flying over forests in Peru spotted on such group. The images that came from that venture were truly astonishing.
It is hard to imagine that in these forests, entire cultures, languages, and ways of life remain untouched by the presence of determined evangelical and catholic missionaries, by commercial exploitation, and by intrusive adventurers and television crews.
Unlike in Brazil, Peru refuses to acknowledge their existence, hoping instead to secure huge areas for a commercial enterprise. There is just too much money to be made and the discovery of oil has made the task to protect the forest and its inhabitants all the more difficult and precarious.
FUNAI, Brazil’s national foundation to protect the Awas, has outlawed logging in areas inhabited by such people. The Awa count only 300 individuals today, living in perfect harmony with nature, in small groups of 20 to 30. The largest live in Maranhao, in the north-east of Brasil.
They represent and symbolize a way of life that reaches back into our past, our own history of who we are as humans. And they know the threat of the outside world. Sixty have never come into any kind of contact with the rest of the world. But just 3km away, the black smoke of machinery is advancing.
Today the loggers are still encroaching, cutting paths undetectable from the air, and felling the oldest and most valuable trees. In 2006, the problem became so bad the Brazilian army was called in to throw them out.
They did, but now the chainsaws and rifles are back and the Awa, having already been pushed further and further into the forest – have nowhere else to go.