![]() ![]() ![]() U is only a small part of the Awa’s traditional land. As a result, some have chosen to live in shelters but they struggle to embrace this new lifestyle. Recently, the Awa have been forced to seek assistance from FUNAI, a local non-profit group. Elsewhere in Maranhão, trains come from Carajas, the world’s biggest iron mine, and cut through the Awa land multiple times per day. The disease was brought to Alto Turiaçu by the thousands “garimpeiros,” or gold seekers, who invaded the Awa lands and later made a fortune on the international market. For example, over the last five years, one in seven Awa died of malaria. Second, the threat of infection after contact with outsiders poses a significant threat to the Awa. Yet despite having survived over the course of centuries, the Awa now face pressing man-made threats while even the natural landscape itself is no longer able to sustain to their way of life.įirst: the fazendeiros, or ranchers are a major problem as the two groups often come to blows over territorial rights. U,” a reservation in the state of Maranhão, continue to live much as they have since they fled Europeans in the 1800s (when they adopted a permanently nomadic lifestyle). The Awa, the last nomadic tribe in the “Alto Turiaç Although it was not chosen as a finalist by the jury, the editors of LensCulture were impressed and decided to publish this feature article about it. Both the forest and its people risk extinction.We first discovered this work after it was submitted to the Visual Storytelling Awards 2014. But it might be a little too late after decades of destruction. ![]() The activists who try to help them are also life-threatened: 1280 have been assassinated since the 1970s.Ī Brazilian judge inquiring illegal logging in Maranhao state recently alerted on the Awá tribe’s real risk of genocide.Īs celebrities like Colin Firth get involved in campaigning alongside NGOs such as Survival, there might be a chance to save these people who have been struggling for 20 years. In 2012, 1200 indigenous people were attacked and 60 were killed by loggers. As criminal loggers keep gaining ground with impunity, survivors have no other choice but to adapt by hiding, hunting only during nighttime, beware of dogs and shootings… Within a few years, around 20% of the Awás have already disappeared. No forest means no food, no resources, no habitat. The forest which they depend upon to survive is shrinking. The Awá tribe is up against the illegal logging industry which is reported to weigh around $15 billion annually and to have strong ties to organized crime. The Brazilian government, reluctant to engage against the powerful agricultural lobby, is doing very little to stop the industry. ![]() Chasing out their inhabitants – violently, if necessary. Despite several protective international treaties, these territories have been illegally exploited by electricity, oil and logging giants over the past 40 years. This film investigates the political and financial interests that are at stake in what some anthropologists call “modern genocide”. According to Survival, suicide rates among isolated people are soaring following contact with modern men. “Survival” – a NGO defending the right of isolated people to their way of life – is campaigning for them. The Awás who number around 450 are among the last hunter-gatherers in the world. The Awá tribe of Brazil is facing slow and inevitable destruction as those who want their forest close in around them. ![]()
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