When I heard the news that the Indigenous man known as “The loneliest man in the world” had died, I felt a deep sadness.The man looks out from his hut. A still from the film Corumbiara, by the film-maker Vincent Carelli.
Dear Jack,
When I heard the news last week that the Indigenous man known as “The loneliest
man in the world” had died, I felt a profound sadness.
He’d lived entirely alone for 26 years, deep in the Brazilian Amazon, and had
resisted every attempt by government teams to make contact with him.
When you knew his story this was entirely understandable, because everyone else
close to him – his family, his friends, all the other members of his tribe – had
been killed in a series of attacks that would have gone unnoticed by the rest of
the world had he not managed, somehow, to survive.
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Over the years a few dedicated individuals in Brazil managed to piece together
what had happened. They heard rumors of cattle ranchers’ hired gunmen bragging
in a bar about killing a group of Indigenous people, and months later they found
the crime scene – the huts, deep in the forest, had been bulldozed in an attempt
to cover it up. The gunmen thought they’d killed everyone but one man had
somehow survived.
We’ll never know how he escaped the attacks, or even what his name was. I
accompanied a government team monitoring his territory in 2005, and will never
forget how the sense of his presence permeated the forest. In one of his
abandoned huts we saw the hole he dug to hide in – evidence, most likely, of the
severe trauma he had experienced.
It was a deeply unsettling experience but I thought it was important to bear
witness to this man’s courage. The news of his passing has made headlines around
the world, and I’m glad that in death his story has not been forgotten.
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But his experience, though extraordinarily tragic, is far from unique. There are
more than 100 uncontacted tribes in Brazil alone, and many others around the
world. Their lands – and their lives – are continually under threat.
Just last week it was revealed that a Brazilian company is trying to mine gold
in the territory of the Piripkura, one of the most vulnerable uncontacted tribes
in the world who have endured a series of genocidal attacks.
Don’t the Piripkura have the right to exist, just as much as “we” do? Do we
really want to do nothing while such peoples are snuffed out in the name of
“progress” and economic gain? Will we just stand by and watch?
Survival stands for a better, more tolerant, world, one which values human
diversity, rather than tries to erase it. We know our campaigns – your campaigns – have already helped many such tribes to survive, but there is much,
much more to do.
Please give anything you can to support this vital work. I know times are very
hard for many, but I also know that there are countless people around the world
who believe, as we do, that such abuses have no place in the modern world, and
we should do everything we can to stop them.
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With thanks,
Fiona Watson
Research and Advocacy Director
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