For at least 26 years a man known as Tanaru lived alone in a small forest in the south-western Brazilian Amazon, moving around his territory, building several houses, planting crops and hunting. He also dug large, mysterious holes inside his homes.
When a team from the National Indigenous Peoples Foundation (Funai) came across him in 1996, he resisted contact, aiming an arrow at them through a gap in his palm shelter, a scene captured in the 2009 documentary Corumbiara. In 2007, Funai officials made another attempt at contact. Again Tanaru repelled it, leaving one man with a bad arrow wound.
He lived undisturbed for another 15 years as the environmental destruction continued around him in Rondônia, one of Brazil’s most deforested Amazonian states. Some called him the “man of the hole” without knowing why he dug the holes.
In 2022, Tanaru lay down in his hammock and died; Algayer was the one who found him. His death, confirming the extinction of his people, made the future of his 8,000 hectares (19,800 acres) of rainforest contentious. Local lawyers argue against demarcating it as Indigenous land, citing a lack of native population. Government prosecutors insist the territory was historically occupied, so should be protected despite not having Indigenous people left in it. The dispute highlights the complexity surrounding the fight for Indigenous land rights, the impact of historical atrocities, and the ongoing risk to uncontacted people (isolados) in the Amazon.
It’s a multifaceted problem.
First, we need to protect forests for the environment and for our survival and health as a species.
Second, we need to protect the lives of other indigenous peoples. Without land protection regardless of the tribe still existing, there’s a perverse incentive for genocide to free up the land.
And finally, we need to prevent multi-national mega corps from gobbling up more land and power.
All these points are important. There’s no need to use fake excuses to push for government protection.
Also very often overlooked: the Amazonas as we know it today is NOT wild in any way. It is a cultural landscape that started around the time when humans settled that area but not later than 11tya
Same with Indigenous Hawaiians, First Nations people in areas of Canada, Mayan people in south-central America, etc …all of whom manipulated the land and waterways to grow a variety of food/medicinal plants closeby.