{"id":14013,"date":"2020-03-26T12:17:58","date_gmt":"2020-03-26T15:17:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.amazoniasocioambiental.org\/?p=14013"},"modified":"2020-03-26T12:22:52","modified_gmt":"2020-03-26T15:22:52","slug":"the-isolated-tribes-at-risk-of-illness-from-amazon-missionaries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.raisg.org\/en\/radar\/the-isolated-tribes-at-risk-of-illness-from-amazon-missionaries\/","title":{"rendered":"The isolated tribes at risk of illness from Amazon missionaries"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Brasil<\/p>\n

The Guardian<\/p>\n

23\/03\/2020<\/p>\n

By: Dom Philips<\/p>\n

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A <\/span><\/span>radical group of evangelical Christian missionaries set on converting every last tribe on Earth has raised fears that deadly diseases \u2013 and even the coronavirus \u2013 will spread in the Brazilian Amazon. The group has based its newly bought helicopter right beside a reserve with the world\u2019s highest concentration of isolated indigenous groups, who have little resistance to common illnesses.<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/header>\n
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There are more than\u00a0100 isolated indigenous groups\u00a0in Brazil, all highly vulnerable to common diseases such as measles and flu, and 16 of them live in the same reserve in the Javari Valley, a vast, remote area the size of Austria. Covid-19 could wipe out any of them.<\/p>\n

Videos posted in 2018 by the US-based missionary organisation Ethnos360 \u2013 formerly called New Tribes Mission \u2013 aimed to raise money to buy the helicopter, saying it would be used to reach \u201cnew people groups\u201d. The Brazilian government official now in charge of isolated and recently contacted tribes at the government\u2019s indigenous agency, Funai, is a\u00a0former New Tribes missionary.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0<\/span>Former evangelical missionary Ricardo Lopes Dias is in charge of Brazil\u2019s isolated indigenous tribes. Photograph: M\u00e1rio Vilela\/Funai<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The official, anthropologist Ricardo Lopes Dias, worked for 10 years for New Tribes beside the\u00a0Javari Valley. New Tribes said its helicopter was now based in Cruzeiro do Sul, 55km south of the reserve.<\/p>\n

\u201cHistory shows us that any contagious disease can be catastrophic for these people,\u201d said Douglas Rodrigues, a professor of medicine at the Federal University of S\u00e3o Paulo with extensive\u00a0experience\u00a0of isolated indigenous groups.<\/p>\n

Doctors also highlighted the danger of Covid-19 for isolated tribes. According to the site\u00a0Amaz\u00f4nia Real, one adult Marubo indigenous man and his two daughters are suspected of having the virus. All three are reported to be in isolation in Atalaia do Norte, a town on the Amazon\u2019s northern edge. Samples for testing need to be sent to Manaus, over 1,000km away.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis virus is a potential killer that could easily wipe out the whole community,\u201d said Adam Mol, a Polish doctor who worked with remote tribes in the Javari Valley.<\/p>\n

Mol cited the case of American missionary\u00a0John Chau, killed by a tribe of hunter-gatherers last year after he landed on North Sentinel Island in the Indian Ocean to illustrate the risks New Tribes present to the region.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe literally accepted killing some of them with the excuse of bringing them God\u2019s word. That\u2019s literally how these people think,\u201d Mol said.<\/p>\n

Evangelical Christians have\u00a0extended\u00a0their influence in Brazil under the country\u2019s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, who increasingly relies on their support and has a history of\u00a0racist\u00a0remarks about indigenous people, calling those living on protected reserves \u201cprehistoric\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe route is being prepared,\u201d Rodrigues said. \u201cThey are ready to invade these territories and do these contacts. New Tribes\u2019 mission is clear.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u00a0<\/span>A man holding a Bible prays during a Christian event called March for Jesus in Brasilia that was attended by Brazil\u2019s president. Photograph: Eraldo Peres\/AP<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The indigenous association of the Javari Valley, Univaja, demanded the authorities take action to \u201cavoid the worst\u201d.<\/p>\n

New Tribes has had a controversial history for decades in\u00a0Brazil. \u201cThey are fundamentalist believers,\u201d said Daniel Everett, an American linguist and former missionary in the Brazilian Amazon who knows the group well. \u201cTheir views are extremely 19th century.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1991, New Tribes missionaries were\u00a0expelled\u00a0by Funai from a remote region where they had contacted an isolated indigenous group of Zo\u2019\u00e9 indigenous people. In 2014, Warren Scott Kennell was given a\u00a058-year sentence\u00a0for producing child pornography while working as a missionary for New Tribes in Brazil and admitted sexually abusing children. In 2018,\u00a0Manoel de Oliveira\u00a0was handed a three-year prison sentence and fined for keeping Zo\u2019\u00e9 indigenous people in\u00a0slave-like conditions\u00a0on his cashew nut plantation. Prosecutors said he had worked with New Tribes in the region. He is currently appealing.<\/p>\n

Brazil\u2019s\u00a0\u00c9poca\u00a0magazine\u00a0reported that Ethnos360 had appealed for donations to buy a helicopter to evangelise isolated indigenous groups in western Brazil, near the Peruvian border. This would contravene the policy Funai has had since 1987 of no contact with isolated groups, introduced after tribes were decimated by disease when contact was forced on them.<\/p>\n

New Tribes pilot Jeremiah Diedrich\u00a0said in a video\u00a0that the region where the Javari Valley is located had the highest concentration of uncontacted people groups anywhere in the world. \u201cIt is the darkest, densest, hardest to reach place in all South America,\u201d Diedrich said. \u201cThis is why we need a helicopter.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe mission leadership is going to be able to assign new teams to reach new people groups in this area,\u201d fellow missionary Julie Diedrich said in the film. In a\u00a0video\u00a0shot in front of the Robinson R66 helicopter that was shared on Facebook, New Tribes\u2019 Brasil director, pastor Edward Gomes da Luz, thanked God for its arrival.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0<\/span>A village in the Yanomami indigenous territory in the north of Brazil, close to the Venezuelan border. At least three groups of Yanomami are uncontacted. Photograph: Guilherme Gnipper Trevisan\/Hutukara<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In February, federal prosecutors sought to suspend Dias\u2019s Funai appointment. In court\u00a0documents, they quoted a recording of Edward Mantoanelli Luz \u2013 a conservative anthropologist, Bolsonaro supporter and son of the New Tribes director, who is not part of the group. In it, he claimed some of the credit for the Dias appointment and vowed the \u201cno contact\u201d policy would end. A judge\u00a0rejected\u00a0the prosecutors\u2019 move.<\/p>\n

Edward Mantoanelli Luz told the Guardian that his father was a \u201cgreat professional\u201d and that Brazil\u2019s policy of no contact had been \u201cmanipulated\u201d by other countries. \u201cWe have now a new president, a president who looks at Brazil before looking abroad. We need to renew and update this policy,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Funai and health professionals could initiate the process of contacting isolated groups, he said. \u201cThe evangelical message can come at another moment,\u201d he added, voicing support for Bolsonaro\u2019s policy to allow commercial farming and\u00a0mining\u00a0on indigenous reserves, activities currently prohibited.<\/p>\n

Last week, Funai\u00a0changed\u00a0its rules to allow contact with isolated groups if Covid-19 made it essential to their survival, and suspended entry to indigenous reserves. Mantoanelli Luz welcomed the move. On Monday, following an outcry, the government effectively changed the rules back again.<\/p>\n

Funai said it has no requests from New Tribes to enter the Javari Valley. Dias declined an interview and did not answer a question on whether the \u201cno contact\u201d policy would be changed.<\/p>\n

\u201cAccording to the current indigenous policy, the self-determination of isolated peoples is a guaranteed and respected right,\u201d he said in an email.<\/p>\n

The prosecutors challenging his appointment described an international movement of missionary groups to convert indigenous tribes, including a coalition called\u00a0Finishing the Task. In a video on the Ethnos360 site called A Vision for Finishing, its CEO in the US, Larry Brown,\u00a0said: \u201cWe can see every tribe reached. It is doable.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Finishing the Task website lists the\u00a0Korubo\u00a0tribe in the Javari Valley as one of its \u201cprioritised unengaged unreached people groups\u201d. Guardian reporters\u00a0visited\u00a0their villages in 2018. Three small groups of Korubo were\u00a0contacted\u00a0by Funai in recent years in exceptional circumstances, following health and security scares. One remains in isolation.<\/p>\n

Doctor Lucas Albertoni worked on all three contacts. \u201cA common cold could evolve into pneumonia and sepsis in a matter of days without medical assistance,\u201d he said, noting that even contacted Korubo remain vulnerable because immunity takes time to build up. \u201cThey are a high-risk group for coronavirus,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

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New Tribes Mission already has one church in the Javari Valley. Its helicopter will \u201csupport mission work in the region\u201d, the group said in a statement. \u201cNew Tribes Mission Brazil does not work with isolated people, without contact,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n

But in 1991, New Tribes missionaries led by Edward Gomes da Luz were expelled by Funai from the eastern Amazon region inhabited by the Zo\u2019\u00e9 tribe. Funai blamed them for dozens of deaths by disease. Douglas Rodrigues arrived in the region with a Funai team six months after the missionaries had set up their base.<\/p>\n