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Reprisals, “forced contact” campaign feared after attack in Yasuní National Park

Native officials and conservationists fear possible reprisals in eastern Ecuador following an attack by uncontacted tribesmen that killed two Waorani Indians last week.

According to a preliminary investigation by officials from the Orellana Province public prosecutor’s office, the victims were speared to death last Tuesday morning while walking near their village of Yarentaro, located along the Maxus Oil Road within the Yasuní National Park. The victims were identified as Ompore Omeway, 70, and his wife, Bogueney, 64.

An elderly woman named Nemongona is said to have witnessed the attack after she fell behind the couple during their walk in the forest. In a statement released by the Organization of the Waorani Nationality of Orellana (ONWO), the witness said the assailants belonged to a clan of Taromenane , a branch of the Waorani who spurned contact with evangelical missionaries in the 1950s and continue to roam the forests of Yasuní as nomads.

As I reported in “Rain Forest for Sale,” National Geographic, January 2013, the contacted Waorani and their elusive bretheren maintain a complicated relationship, characterized by both fear and admiration. Contacted Waorani villagers often cultivate crops for their nomadic relatives to take as they wish, but they also remain wary of a people who have yet to be “civilized” and resort to violence in response to perceived threats.

ONWO’s statement indicates that the victims had sustained previous encounters with the elusive Taromenane, who reportedly conveyed their growing irritation over an influx of outsiders and increased industrial activity in the zone. The victims may have been attacked because of their inability to effectively channel the complaints. The incident occurred in the environs of an oil processing facility operated by the Spanish energy company REPSOL.

The Yasuní rain forest harbors some of the richest biodiversity in the world, as well as two uncontacted clans of Waorani, the Taromenane and the Tagaeri. But the region also holds large deposits of petroleum, and oil exploration continues to advance within the boundaries of the national park. Government agencies and oil companies are required to avoid activities that would endanger the wellbeing of the isolated indigenous groups. The government of President Rafael Correa has offered to postpone indefinitely oil exploration in the far eastern portion of the Yasuní in exchange for $3.6 billion in compensation from the international community.

ONWO has called on the government of Ecuador to immediately implement “precautionary measures” to protect the Taromenane and Tagaeri and vigorously opposes any efforts to make “forced contact” with the groups, as some authorities are advocating. Meanwhile, Waorani officials are seeking to dissuade relatives of the victims from launching a reprisal raid, which could have disastrous consequences for contacted and uncontacted Waorani alike.

Leaders of another native rights group, the Waorani Nationality of Ecuador (NAWE), say that oil exploration and illegal logging in the region have put mounting pressure on the isolated groups.

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New study says U.S. firms importing millions of dollars worth of ill-gotten timber

The timber industry in Peru is rife with corruption and illegality, and international buyers are complicit in a “well-oiled machine” that is plundering the Peruvian rain forest, endangering its rich biodiversity and undermining the welfare of indigenous communities, according to a major new study by the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA).

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Authorities are scrambling to establish security in a remote Amazonian frontier region following recent attacks by isolated tribesmen that have left one man dead and another wounded in the wilds of southeastern Peru. The attacks — in October and November of last year  – come amid an upturn in the number of sightings of nomadic Mashco-Piro Indians along major waterways in the dense forests bordering the Manu National Park, posing an increasingly volatile situation for communities, travelers, and the isolated tribespeople.

Isolated Mashco-Piro Indians on Madre de Dios River, Peruvian Amazon, photo by Diego Cortijo/Survival/uncontactedtribes.org

The rights group Survival International released dramatic photographs earlier today of the same group of Mashco-Piro that is believed to have launched the November attack. Witnesses say the victim, a Matsigenka Indian named Nicolas “Shaco” Flores, was killed when struck in the heart with a bamboo-tipped arrow as he tended a garden on an island in the middle of the Madre de Dios River, just outside the community of Diamante on the edge of the Manu Park. Survival described the photos as the most detailed, up-close images ever taken of uncontacted Indians.

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The Peruvian government has released dramatic new footage showing a near-encounter with a group of uncontacted Indians along a riverbank in the Amazon rain forest. The video was taken by travelers on the Manu River in southeastern Peru in recent months, according to officials from Peru’s Ministry of the Environment, who released the images on Monday.

In the video, travelers appear to be playing a game of cat and mouse with the naked tribesmen, drifting close to shore only to flee in panic in their motorboat as the natives approach. Some of the Indians brandish bows and arrows, and at one moment, one of them prepares to launch an arrow at the boat. The travelers are heard debating among themselves whether to approach, whether to back off, and if they should leave gifts of food or clothing on the shore for the Indians to take.

Officials said there have been multiple sightings in recent months of nomadic bands of Mashco-Piro Indians in the area of Manu National Park. Isolated Indians are known to travel extensively by foot during the dry season, now at its height, appearing along the riverbanks as they search for turtle eggs buried in nests along the sandy beaches of the western Amazon. But mounting pressure from logging crews, wildcat gold prospectors, and seismic teams exploring for oil and gas are flushing isolated indigenous out of the forests as well, according to Roger Rumrill, a special advisor to the Environment Ministry.

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Five Brazilian Indian rights officials are holding out in a remote jungle outpost in a desperate attempt to protect uncontacted indigenous groups from heavily-armed drug traffickers who have moved into the area from Peru in the past two weeks, according to dispatches from the scene. Officials fear the traffickers may have unleashed a manhunt to track down and exterminate the highly vulnerable tribal populations in order to clear the forests for their coca-growing operations.

Isolated Indians in the headwaters of the Envira River on the Brazil-Peru border take aim at

a low-flying aircraft with bows and arrows in 2008. Credit: Gleison Miranda/FUNAI

posted on NationalGeographic.com

Officials from Brazil’s Indian affairs agency, FUNAI, say they have confirmed the existence of a previously unknown indigenous group in the rugged folds of the western Amazon. The tribe, believed to number as many as 200 people, was initially discovered through the examination of satellite images of rain forest clearings and confirmed by aerial reconnaissance flights earlier this year.

The overflights revealed three separate clearings and four large communal dwellings, known as malocas, clustered in the dense jungles of the Javari Valley Indigenous Reserve in far western Brazil. Specialists in matters pertaining to isolated Indians estimate the population of uncontacted tribes by examining the size and number of dwellings, as well as any gardens the inhabitants might have under cultivation. (more)

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Peru says it will bolster protections for uncontacted tribes roaming the deep Amazon after a public row erupted last week that sent indigenous affairs officials scrambling for cover.

The debate began in recent days after officials from the outgoing administration of president Alan Garcia let slip a series of statements hinting at plans to modify—and perhaps even revoke—protected status for two so-called territorial reserves set aside for isolated indigenous groups and the rain forest that harbors them.

As many as 15 nomadic or seminomadic indigenous groups are believed to inhabit remote stretches of eastern Peru in willful isolation from the rest of the world. They figure among the very last uncontacted tribes on Earth. That’s not an arbitrary number; it’s based on extensive documentation of sightings of furtive tribespeople or the vestiges they leave behind—footprints, spears, ceramic pots, shelters—as they move through the forest. (more)