The World's Most Secretive Societies Face Immediate Threats

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Deep in the Amazon rainforest of Brazil lies a territory spanning 85,000 square kilometres, where 99 per cent of its original forest cover remains intact.

The Javari Valley is also home to the greatest concentration of isolated and uncontacted Indigenous groups in the world, who live by hunting, fishing and small-scale cultivation, maintaining languages and traditions that predate modern nation-states.

A recently released report found there is a risk that some of these communities will no longer be around by 2035 and outlined the threats to these communities.

Survival International, the not-for-profit that put the document together, called for governments and industries to recognise and address the problem as a global emergency.

The report warned that almost half of Indigenous communities living cut off from the world could cease to exist within the decade due to factors including logging, mining and tourism.

Among the world’s uncontacted Indigenous communities, only eight exist outside of South America, with an overwhelming majority residing in Brazil.

Survival International estimated there are 196 such uncontacted communities across the globe, spread across 10 countries in South America, Asia, and the Pacific.

Source: SBS News

A map showing which countries uncontacted Indigenous communities live.

According to the organization, these isolated groups are increasingly under threat from infrastructure projects, illegal mining operations, and drug trafficking activities, often occurring far from public scrutiny and lacking adequate governmental safeguards.

For decades, Brazil encouraged contact with the isolated Indigenous communities in the Javari Valley, however, it reversed course in 1987, adopting a no-contact policy, which allowed interaction only if initiated by the Indigenous people themselves.

Otherwise, they must be left alone.

The report from the NGO highlights that approximately 65% of these communities are endangered by deforestation, around 40% by mining activities, and nearly 20% by agricultural industry expansion.

What are the threats faced by uncontacted communities?

Pearce said the growing exploitation of nickel to meet surging demand for electric vehicle batteries was of concern in Indonesia.

“There are uncontacted Hongana Manyawa people on Halmahera Island in Indonesia who are warning off those who are bulldozing their land for nickel mining,” she said.

Agricultural interests are also pushing closer to some of these communities.

“We have Araya families in Paraguay who are right now evading those who are clearing their land for cattle ranching,” Pearce said.

For the Kakataibo community of Peru’s Ucayali region, illegal logging and cocoa cultivation are impacting their way way of life.

Kakataibo community member Herlin Odicio does not live in isolation and instead campaigns on his people’s behalf.

“We Indigenous organisations are working to defend their land rights because they don’t have people who can come out and fight for themselves,” he said.

“They are being invisibilised by the government. The Peruvian government is trying to eliminate the laws and bring in anti-Indigenous laws that would really be terrible for uncontacted peoples.

“This would mean the extermination of our uncontacted relatives.”

Kakataibo man Herlin Odicio, wearing a beaded headress and vest, speaks into a microphone.

Herlin Odicio campaigns on behalf of the Kakataibo community. Source: Getty / Leon Neal

Fiona Watson, Survival International’s campaigns director, said while isolation was a defining factor in these people’s lives, their remoteness could also make these groups vulnerable.

“Genocides that we have catalogued and that are still happening, for all we know, are what I would call silent genocides,” she said.

“There are no TV crews in there or journalists reporting because uncontacted Indigenous peoples live in very remote forested areas like the Amazon or the rainforest of Indonesia and West Papua, and India.”

Disease is the other risk threatening uncontacted peoples.

In 2020, it was COVID-19, as it spread across the globe, with Brazil recording more than 60 deaths at the hands of the coronavirus among the Kayapo Indigenous people and other tribes.

But director general of the Forest Stewardship Council, Subhra Bhattacharjee, said the common cold could even pose a threat.

“A simple cold that you and I recover from in a week, that you can even go to work with — if they contract that, they could be killed,” she said.

“They could die of that cold; they don’t have the immunity.”

Survival International argues these threats often receive little priority from governments, which critics say see uncontacted peoples as politically marginal because they don’t vote and their territories are often coveted for logging, mining and oil extraction.

Indigenous rights, particularly land rights, are protected under international law. Even if there is national legislation to protect the communities, NGOs say implementation was often weak.

Watson said sometimes it was the authorities themselves behind the projects that posed threats to these communities.

“There’s a railway line being planned in Brazil, in the Amazon, to transport agricultural produce from the rich agricultural centre-west, up to the northeast, therefore out to the Atlantic to export produce that potentially affects three uncontacted Indigenous peoples,” she said.

Actor Richard Gere speaks at a press conference about uncontacted Indigenous people.

Actor Richard Gere advocates for the protection of the rights of uncontacted Indigenous communities. Source: Getty / Leon Neal

For actor Richard Gere, a supporter of the organisation and a long-time activist, the lack of strong protections pointed to something more fundamental, where biases and stereotypes shape public debate.

He said at one extreme, uncontacted peoples could be romanticised as “lost tribes”, while at the other extreme, they were viewed as barriers to development.

“You know, I grew up in a country that was built on the misery of our Indigenous people in America,” he said.

“And I have enormous shame about that… It was the wrong thing to do, and it was cruel and it was unnecessary.”

Odicio said the preservation of uncontacted peoples would require both stronger laws and a shift in how the world viewed them.

He said these people were not relics of the past, but citizens of the planet whose survival affected everyone’s future.

“They have land rights — rights over their ancestral territories — but there are illegal activities happening on those territories,” Odicio said.

“This contributes to the lack of security and to the vulnerability that they face. We are not asking the government for a favour, this is a right that we have had for many decades.”