LONDON, (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – The Brazilian government has strongly criticized a call by two U.S. anthropologists to force contact with South America’s most isolated tribes to ensure their survival.
In an open letter signed by 18 experts, Brazil’s Department of Indigenous Affairs (FUNAI) yesterday rejected Robert Walker and Kim Hills’ suggestion that remaining hidden was “not viable in the long term” for the estimated 50 to 100 remaining tribes in Brazil who have had no contact with the outside world.
The professors, from the University of Missouri and Arizona State University, argued in an article published last year in Science magazine that “controlled contact is the only possible strategy for protecting these people”.
But FUNAI specialists said contact carries greater dangers including the loss of land and resources to violent outsiders, exposure to diseases such as measles and flu to which they have no immunity and the loss of autonomy and self determination.
“There is never absolute control in contact situations,” according to the letter circulated to the media.
“It is worth remembering that the practices Brazil adopted during the intense economic expansion of the 1970s and 1980s resulted in widespread disintegration and population loss for indigenous peoples who, until then, had been uncontacted.”
