The Wardman Wire

Do you remember the lost tribe shooting arrows at a low flying aircraft? It turns out that the picture was not a lost tribe at all - it was a tribe known for around a century.

On May 30th it was:

Aerial images prove existence of remote Amazon tribe

Deep in the Amazon jungle, one of the Brazil’s last uncontacted indigenous tribes has been photographed from the air, to prove its existence.

This morning the Observer has a story:

Tribal guardian admits the Amazon Indians’ existence was already known, but he hoped the publicity would lift the threat of logging

They are the amazing pictures that were beamed around the globe: a handful of warriors from an ‘undiscovered tribe’ in the rainforest on the Brazilian-Peruvian border brandishing bows and arrows at the aircraft that photographed them.

Or so the story was told and sold. But it has now emerged that, far from being unknown, the tribe’s existence has been noted since 1910 and the mission to photograph them was undertaken in order to prove that ‘uncontacted’ tribes still existed in an area endangered by the menace of the logging industry.

The disclosures have been made by the man behind the pictures, José Carlos Meirelles, 61, one of the handful of sertanistas – experts on indigenous tribes – working for the Brazilian Indian Protection Agency, Funai, which is dedicated to searching out remote tribes and protecting them.

(Photo: Guardian. You can see the whole original set of photos on the Guardian website here).

So, why would anyone believe the Brazilian Indian Protection Agency protecting the Indian tribes and the forest say next time?

It pains me to say it, but I have not got the foggiest idea why anybody should do so either …

Tags: amazon, brazil indian protection agency, funai, indian tribe, lost tribe