nonist annex comments

I know by now everyone has seen the photos of the “lost” tribe recently photographed in the Amazon, somewhere on the border between Peru and Brazil, but I wanted to post them here anyway just so I can look at them everyday until they fall off the front page. Wow.

Quote: Brazil’s National Indian Foundation has discovered an Indian tribe in the Amazon that hasn’t had contact with civilization in a rare sighting of the few remaining original inhabitants of the area. Funai, as the foundation is known, spotted a group of Indians, six huts and a large planted area near the Envira River, close to the Peruvian border in the Brazilian state of Acre in the western Amazon rainforest. There are more than 100 uncontacted tribes worldwide, with more than half living in Brazil or Peru. -Bloomberg.com

Dated: 05.30 Comments: 5 Permanent link to this post: ≡ Email this post: »

I read an amazing article ten or fifteen years ago in the Worcester Telegram/Gazette, which I would love to link if only I could find it. It was a human-interest piece on a local woman who had grown up in an Amazonian tribe like this one, but married an anthropologist and came to America. It opened with a sentence that read about like this: “The first time (her name here) saw the car she now drives, she thought it was a gigantic beast with flaming eyes.”

Wow, I can only imagine what they must be thinking when they see the plane! How would they even begin to understand it, within the context of their life experience? I’d love to know what myth would be constructed to explain it.

@Jeff: guess I owe you a drink huh?

@Tom: Your memory scares me. Please do more drugs immediately and remedy it.

@Michelangelo: EXACTLY. I have to admit, my second thought upon seeing those photos was… “viral marketing?”

@ Catherine: Well, unfortunately I don’t credit humanity with all that much imagination when you get right down to it, so I’l assume the construction which followed went something like… “The great and powerful (name of God here) has been angered by (name of unpopular tribesman here) actions, and was warning us that if we followed his lead he would swoop down and (type of horrific death) us all!”