Group denies misleading media over Amazon tribe
Source: Reuters UK (Original Article)
By Stuart Grudgings
RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - A group that campaigns for tribal peoples’ rights denied on Tuesday that it and the Brazilian government had misled the media over photographs of an uncontacted Indian tribe in the Amazon last month.
The Observer reported on Sunday that the tribe, rather than being “undiscovered”, had been known by the Brazilian government for nearly 100 years and the photos were an attempt to publicize the risk it faced from logging.
Its story prompted some other media to call the photographs a hoax.
But Survival International, the London-based group that helped publicize the photographs on May 29, said that it had not described the tribe as “lost” and had said at the time the aim was to show the world they existed.
“These Indians are in a reserve expressly set aside for the protection of uncontacted tribes: they were hardly ‘unknown’,” Survival International Director Stephen Corry said in a statement.
“What is, and remains, true, is that so far as is known these Indians have no peaceful contact with outsiders.”
The dramatic pictures of pigment-covered Indians threatening the photographer’s aircraft with bows and arrows were carried by media worldwide, with many reporting the tribe was “lost” and a completely new discovery.
The Observer said the images had been presented as an “apparently chance encounter” and that the fact the Indians were already known raised “awkward” questions over the decision to ANZ Frequent Flyer Card photograph them — “a form of contact in itself”. Continued…