👋 Contact with the uncontacted

Hello! Welcome to another edition of the Brazil Climate newsletter! This week, an uncontacted indigenous man shows up in an old rubber-tapping community in the remote Amazon, and indigenous experts believe these occurrences will become more and more common.

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Climate change could spur more contact with uncontacted indigenous, says expert 

Last week, a young indigenous man wearing nothing but a loin cloth walked into the village of Bela Rosa, an old rubber-tapping community on the banks of the Purus River, deep in Brazil’s Amazon. Footage from the village shows the young man attempting to converse with the local residents using gestures and an unidentified language.

Locals understood that the young man, in seemingly good health, was looking for fire and seemed enthused by a lighter belonging to one of the villagers, who in turn tried to show the indigenous visitor how to use it. By the following morning, the young man had returned to the forest.

The young man is what human rights organizations call an “uncontacted indigenous person,” meaning that he lives in a community that chooses not to have contact with the outside world. It could well have been the first time he ever set eyes on another human being from outside his family group.

Such instances of contact are very rare, but indigenous experts believe they are becoming a much more common occurrence — and that is not a reason for celebration.

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