Ten indigenous people – including women and children – were murdered in the Javari Valley region of the Amazon in September this year, according to reports. Their bodies were alleged to have been mutilated and dumped in a river. The attack was believed to have been carried out by gold miners, two of whom were later recorded bragging about it in a local bar.

This is not the story of some conquistadors or rubber tappers in the colonial era. This happened in 2017 – just weeks ago – in the present-day Republic of Brazil. Despite all of the apparent “progress” that humanity has made over the past few centuries, whole populations of indigenous peoples are still being systematically annihilated by land invaders and colonists.

Extremely vulnerable

Outside indigenous rights circles, many people are still amazed at the very existence of uncontacted tribes. The popular assumption is that that era is over: the entire world has been colonized and brought over into the industrialized mainstream.

But as extraordinary aerial photos released by Survival International in 2008 and again in 2011 revealed, this simply isn’t the case. There are people, in the Amazon and elsewhere, who choose to reject contact with the mainstream.