
‘Uncontacted’ Amazon Tribe Members Are Reported Killed in Brazil - spking
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/10/world/americas/brazil-amazon-tribe-killings.html
======
hallman76
I've always been completely blown away that there were 'uncontacted' tribes on
Earth at the same time that we had a rover zipping around Mars.

Gibson said it. The future is here, it's just not evenly distributed.

~~~
fpoling
Consider if a really big disaster happens or total nuclear war etc., who have
better chance to survive it, our modern civilization or some remote tribe in
Amazon? And from that point of view a rover on Mars is not that impressive. If
it will be a human colony there that can survive without Earth, then we are
talking. But it requires a lot more advances and political will.

~~~
blubb-fish
at the end of the day life is not about being impressive. life is about
living. and I have not doubt those tribes are happier than 90% of the people
belonging to advanced civilizations.

~~~
grecy
> _I have not doubt those tribes are happier than 90% of the people belonging
> to advanced civilizations._

I have just spent a year in 16 countries in West Africa.

On the whole, people here are extremely happy / content / friendly.

In all honesty, they make Canadians look unfriendly and unhappy.

I know you strongly believe everything we have invented in the modern world
makes us happier (almost everyone does) You really, really, REALLY need to see
with you own eyes, not just listen to what you have been told.

~~~
mcguire
I personally am much happier than I would be as a hunter-gatherer.

~~~
grecy
Your mistake is thinking the alternative to the life you have now is 'hunter-
gatherer'.

Hundreds of millions of people live with a lot less technology and stuff that
you, are extremely happy, and are not hunter-gatherers.

~~~
mcguire
The article in question concerns an "uncontacted" Amazon tribe, and these
discussions usually lead to paeans to the pre-agricultural life. I'm sorry if
I jumped to conclusions.

On the other hand, the Symbicort I inhale daily to avoid COPD (and the
emergency room treatments I received when I was younger) are pretty high tech.

------
mateus1
I can't put into words how ashamed I am as a Brazilian.

Our country is going to hell in a handbasket.

~~~
kafkaesq
Your countrymen are just playing catch-up, on top of what the European
colonialists did for centuries.

And not just "settlers" and miners acting on their own - but acting on the
direct behalf of, and and funded by their local governments:

[http://newsroom.ucla.edu/stories/revealing-the-history-of-
ge...](http://newsroom.ucla.edu/stories/revealing-the-history-of-genocide-
against-californias-native-americans)

~~~
darawk
They're catching up to where Europe was 200 years ago? Kind of insulting to
Brazilians, don't you think?

~~~
kafkaesq
I actually meant it more in this vein: "Given that the current descent into
barbarbarism -- enacted by an outlier minority of their population, in one
tiny corner of their country -- is still but a tiny fraction of what the
Europeans, Arabs and their local proxies did, and much more as a popular and
broadly-supported effort across pretty much the entire globe, across literally
tens of generations, from about 500 until about 50 years ago -- as a people
and a culture they aren't looking so bad."

Barbaric and shameful though it is.

------
Boothroid
This makes my heart ache so much that I can hardly bear to read it. I also
feel like I detect a note of insecurity in many of the comments - it's as if
the idea that our modern lifestyle and its impacts may be problematic and or
in some aspects inferior to pre-modern ways of living is somehow threatening,
and must therefore be rejected. I think it's massively ignorant and brutish to
view earlier civilisations with such contempt, and collectively suicidal for
humanity for us to carry on regardless when the Earth seems to be giving us
plenty of signs that we are heading for disaster unless we change.

~~~
feralmoan
Topical, I watched a movie last night that covers a lot of the things you
mentioned - Lost City Of Z
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1212428](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1212428) it
didn't get great ratings but was good, cinematic and thoughtful imho

~~~
Boothroid
Cheers for the tip, looks right up my street and is on Netflix

------
Alex3917
Oh well, there goes potentially thousands of years worth of medical knowledge,
linguistic insight, etc.

~~~
ekianjo
> thousands of years worth of medical knowledge

If that can somewhat reassure you, most of the "traditional medicines" once
tested in proper clinical trials, are just about the same as placebo. I'm not
saying all, but a good majority. And people used to die from simple infections
way more before we had modern medicine with antibiotics and the like, so I'd
rather count on modern medicine any day for discoveries and treatments.

~~~
kamaal
That is not the point.

Staying in the jungle for a few thousand years leads you to optimize locally
sourced flora and fauna to amazing levels to solve a range of medical
conditions. That could be helpful to a lot of people in many social and
financial conditions.

~~~
messe
> Staying in the jungle for a few thousand years leads you to optimize locally
> sourced flora and fauna to amazing levels to solve a range of medical
> conditions.

Do you have a source to back that up?

~~~
logibly
Do you have a source to rule it out ??

~~~
messe
No, but I'm not the one making a claim.

~~~
kamaal
Not sure what you are asking for here.

You seem to asking for proof that humans for all these thousands of years of
existence pre industrial revolution needed some kind of a health care system
to survive.

There are some things that go as an axiom.

------
pmarreck
If these are similar to other "uncontacted" tribes I've read about, they seem
to react quite violently/aggressively when confronted (it doesn't matter if
it's a reaction to fear... if someone's shooting arrows at you first and
asking questions later and you have a gun... most people are going to return
fire), so if the gold miners said they either had to kill or be killed, I'm
inclined to believe them unfortunately.

~~~
kafkaesq
_If these are similar to other "uncontacted" tribes I've read about, they seem
to react quite violently/aggressively when confronted_

As you would do, if a bunch of assholes started encroaching on your ancestral
property.

 _So if the gold miners said they either had to kill or be killed, I 'm
inclined to believe them unfortunately._

No -- what they needed to do was just GTFO out of there, being as they clearly
had no business being in those areas in first place. Paycheck, or "boss's
orders" be damned.

~~~
Danihan
Why does the concept of "ancestral property" somehow suddenly make violence
acceptable to you. If the bank or government forecloses on my mother's house,
I can shoot whoever comes to take ownership?

~~~
kafkaesq
_If the bank or government forecloses on my mother 's house, I can shoot
whoever comes to take ownership?_

That's clearly not a relevant analogy.

 _Why does the concept of "ancestral property" somehow suddenly make violence
acceptable to you._

Look, it was the person _above_ me who was saying, basically, that it was the
miners' violence _against the tribespeople_ that was "acceptable"
(paraphrasing, but that's what they basically said). So perhaps you should
take up this line of discussion with them, instead.

All I'm saying is - if you knowingly invade territory known to be inhabited by
an "uncontacted" community -- that is to say: by definition, a _fully
sovereign_ community, and not bound by any treaties with your own government
-- and you don't expect the same kind of response (i.e. violent) any self-
respecting community would make when not just their land, but their very
_survival_ comes under direct attack -- then at the very least, you're pretty
damn naive.

And on top of that, it becomes really, really hard to see why you might
deserve any sympathy.

~~~
Danihan
What if they _did_ expect a response, and then simply answered violence with
violence?

Typically the person considered to be at fault is the _initiator_ of violence.

~~~
kafkaesq
In deciding to encroach upon those tribal properties (and hence, implicitly
threatening the long-term physical survival of the people currently living
there), clearly it's the miners who initiated violence, in this case.

~~~
Danihan
Trespassing is an "implicit threat" that justifies initiation of violence to
you?

That's fine if they want to attack anyone they perceive as being intruders.
But once they do, retaliation is fair game as well. Live by the sword, die by
the sword, and all that.

~~~
kafkaesq
_Trespassing is an "implicit threat" that justifies initiation of violence to
you?_

You're dodging the central issue: that it was the miners' _act of trespass_
that, in itself, constituted the "initiation of violence" in this case.

 _But once they do, retaliation is fair game as well._

Sorry, but there's a very clear moral gradient at play here. It seems like
you're trying to suggest there's at least some rough equivalence between the
actions of the two parties. But if so, then I just don't buy that argument, at
all.

------
addicted
So 10 people were killed and possibly loads of culture destroyed because
people wanted more shiny rocks. It goes to show that as advanced as we think
we as modern humans are we are pretty damn primitive.

~~~
nippples
> _we as modern humans_

Most humans had literally nothing to do with this.

~~~
adventured
> Most humans had literally nothing to do with this.

It's impossible to apply effective collective guilt and to properly human-
bash, if the "we" isn't used, that's why it is so frequently invoked that way.
They know that the extreme majority of people had nothing to do with it when
they use that phrasing, it doesn't have any captivation what-so-ever if you
say: an extraordinarily small number of people out of seven billion are/were
the problem/cause. It applies similarly to nearly every popular topic of human
bashing, from animal cruelty to war (just as when people say their faith in
humanity has been restored because of the act of one person, they're making a
similar intentional error of collective application).

~~~
Chris2048
> just as when people say their faith in humanity has been restored

I don't find that convincing at all though.

------
replayzero
I saw that as Amazon Prime members...

------
noam87
The level of ignorance and /r/iamverysmart-worthy pontificating that's on
display in this thread is truly embarrassing.

Worse than embarrassing, it's the embodiment of banal evil; because it's
precisely this ignorance and blitheness that's enabling the atrocities that
continue to go on in South America.

For Christ's sake, people, travel -- or read a damn book at the very least
before sharing such ill-founded opinions.

Except for rare uncontacted tribes, South American natives are actual people
you can meet and talk to. Ask them yourself why they choose not to join our
wonderful shiny way of life.

~~~
trentmb
Gee mister, I sure hope that I can be as smart as you one day!

------
userbinator
For a second, I thought there was a new product called Tribe from Amazon...

------
jjawssd
Why is this article considered worthy of being posted on "Hacker News?" I fail
to understand how this is at all relevant to "Hackers."

------
dogruck
Innocent until proven guilty. Gotta love this paragraph: “There is a lot of
evidence, but it needs to be proven,” she said.

What's the evidence?

~~~
pvg
_Innocent until proven guilty._

This is a principle of the US criminal justice system not a law of newspaper
reporting and/or nature.

~~~
parineum
It's a principle of the US criminal justice system that is derived from a
moral intuition of justice. I hate seeing the US policy discarded because it's
"irrelevant" to the context. The basis of the law is a moral issue that is
always relevant. If murder wasn't illegal it'd still be wrong.

If you want to disagree with the moral principle, go ahead (but I suspect
you'll sound like a tyrant).

~~~
topmonk
Morality, morality morality, right, wrong, good, evil, bla bla bla... oh and
if you disagree with me you should be shamed and ridiculed.

This is just an appeal to the mob to punish those that have a different value
system then you. It works because there are enough people in the mob that
agree with you that they know the absolute sense of what right and wrong is,
that they all will punish those that don't share the same belief system, and
praise you for sharing theirs.

So you get that tiny instinctual reward because you have shown yourself to be
a valued member of the crowd through upvotes. And you'll also get an
instinctual reward due to the sense of power, because those that oppose you
are punished get downvoted to oblivion. This completes the circle, and keeps
the mob mentality self sustaining. However, no intellectual progress comes out
of it, and in fact it makes everyone dumber by rewarding only those who praise
the mob.

~~~
oh_sigh
The alternative is to live in a world where a few "strong men"/alpha males
dominate over many people through fear and intimidation. I can't say one
system is inherently more moral than the other but it does seem obvious which
system is better for the average person

------
aaron695
So we let the human zoo keep on running and are supprised they get murdered?

We refuse to supply them with medicine, technology and law and order and
murders happen? Supprise supprise.

What a awful awful thing it is to leave them in the stone ages, and all the
horrific things that happen in tribes, just for our entertainment.

OT There is a parellel here to possible libitarian utopias. Sure you are
without government, but as such you have no protection.

If you piss off a country and they bomb you/stop you resupplying, you don't
really have any recourse.

~~~
lawlessone
"What a awful awful thing it is to leave them in the stone ages, and all the
horrific things that happen in tribes, just for our entertainment."

Contact usually hasn't been good for the health of many of these people.

~~~
aaron695
I'm better off than my parents who were better off than their parents etc for
a while.

Sorry, it's called progress. We war less, we rape less, we murder less, we
live longer.

And why this mythology than contact now is combiariable to contact 200+ years
ago is beyond me.

Anyway, as the zoo keepers we gave a responsibility for our exibit.

We are possibly letting them down here. If we are going to keep them in the
dark ages we need to step up.

~~~
moretai
You should go down there and help them out.

~~~
aaron695
Even if it was efficient for myself to, it is not allowed to immunise them I
believe? Anti-Vax to the max.

I could not for instance voluntarily give them a schooling level that is
mother fucking compulsory in the USA?

And Europe of course, just picked USA cause it's very libertarian but STILL
makes education compulsory.

------
dmix
> “There is a lot of evidence, but it needs to be proven,” she said.

This won't stop the pitchforks from coming out well before we have such
evidence, especially given they were workers from a mining company and the
already hostile political climate regarding the topic of tribes. But
personally I'd rather wait until this is the case before forming an opinion...

> warned that given the small sizes of the uncontacted Amazon tribes, this
> latest episode could mean that a significant percentage of a remote ethnic
> group was wiped out.

If 10 people dying means a "significant percentage was wiped out" shows that
they were already on the brink of extinction as it was. It's not clear from
the article if that was an obvious consequence to the preptraitors involved or
they knew it was a risk.

Either way hopefully it wasn't a case of disregard for human life, even if the
tribe violently engaged them giving an exuse to use modern weaponry against
them.

~~~
dogruck
Also this: With land disputes on the rise in many remote areas of Brazil,
indigenous groups, rural workers and land activists have all been targeted by
violence.

Not justifying alleged murder -- but looks to be a generally violent region
and environment.

