“The Juma were a very, very numerous people,” says Mandeí Juma. “We’re now down to just three of us because of the massacre – and also because white people have come into contact with uncontacted people.”

The Juma’s territory once spanned 93,000 acres around the Purus river in the Brazilian Amazon. Invading colonizers brought violence, disease and displacement, ravaging the Jumas. Then, in 1964, gunmen sent by local colonists massacred the already depleted Juma population, killing at least 60 people and leaving only a handful of survivors.

Following this devastating attack, a small group of survivors sought safety deeper in the forest. But violence was not the only danger. After years of trying, evangelical American missionaries made contact with the group.

“The Americans [missionaries] brought even more disease…which led to people dying. That’s why my sister died.”

Evangelical missionaries targeting uncontacted peoples have been responsible for countless deaths, primarily through exposure to disease. Even now, at least one in 6 uncontacted peoples are threatened by missionaries attempting to contact and convert uncontacted peoples.

The Juma group was known to FUNAI, the Brazilian Indigenous Affairs agency. They had a constitutional obligation to fully recognize and protect Juma land, but instead in 1998 they decided to relocate the small group of remaining Juma hundreds of miles away.

“My aunt was already old,” said Mandeí. “To take an old woman off her land, it’s like you’re ripping the person apart, ending their life. That’s why she died. She died there, my aunt – and my uncle, too. They took my father. But we later managed to bring him back to his land.”

They finally returned to their ancestral land in 2013. Mandeí’s father – the last Juma man – died of COVID in 2021. “Then we were the only Juma survivors – me, my sister and my other sister. That’s three people.”

Now, Mandeí works for FUNAI, monitoring the lands of uncontacted Indigenous people. “I joined the monitoring work so that this wouldn’t happen again, so that people wouldn’t go in and massacre the uncontacted people. It’s to protect them, so they don’t end up like the Juma people.”

Dear Jack, almost half of the world’s uncontacted peoples could face what the Juma people have experienced within the next 10 years unless governments and companies act. Please help us ensure this doesn’t happen.