![]() A third of the rainforest in the Awá territory in Maranhão state in north-east Brazil has since been destroyed and outsiders have exposed the Awá to diseases against which they have no natural immunity. ![]() It was, according to Survival's research director, Fiona Watson, a recipe for disaster. A road-building programme quickly followed, opening up the Awá's jungle home to loggers, who moved in from the east. The railway cut directly through the Awá's land and with the railway came settlers. The EEC gave Brazil $600m to build a railway from the mines to the coast, on condition that Europe received a third of the output, a minimum of 13.6m tons a year for 15 years. Their troubles began in earnest in 1982 with the inauguration of a European Economic Community (EEC) and World Bank-funded programme to extract massive iron ore deposits found in the Carajás mountains. According to Survival, they are now the world's most threatened tribe, assailed by gunmen, loggers and hostile settler farmers. The Awá are one of only two nomadic hunter-gathering tribes left in the Amazon. The 51-year-old, who starred in last year's hit movie The King's Speech, and came to prominence playing Mr Darcy in the 1995 BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, delivers an appeal to camera calling on Brazil's minister of justice to send in police to drive out the loggers. In a video to be launched on Wednesday, Firth will ask the Brazilian government to take urgent action to protect the tribe. This week Survival International will launch a new campaign to highlight the plight of the Awá, backed by Oscar-winning actor Colin Firth. Human rights campaigners say the tribe has reached a tipping point and only immediate action by the Brazilian government to prevent logging can save the tribe. Members of the tribe describe seeing their families wiped out. Hired gunmen – known as pistoleros – are reported to be hunting Awá who have stood in the way of land-grabbers. People are pouring on to the Awá's land, building illegal settlements, running cattle ranches. But it is not just the loss of the trees that has created a situation so serious that it led a Brazilian judge, José Carlos do Vale Madeira, to describe it as "a real genocide". It is a scene played out throughout the Amazon as the authorities struggle to tackle the powerful illegal logging industry. All they could do was video the lorry and add the film to the growing mountain of evidence showing how the Awá – with only 355 surviving members, more than 100 of whom have had no contact with the outside world – are teetering on the edge of extinction. There are now believed to be only 400 left in the tribe.Yet as they travelled through the jungle early this year, the small team from Funai – Brazil's National Indian Foundation – did not dare try to stop the loggers the vehicle was too large and the loggers were almost certainly armed. After all, every day, they get their shopping from the jungles.”īefore Portuguese settlers landed in the area 500 years ago, tens of thousands of Awa people were believed to have lived in the Amazon. “Maybe they think it is coming from the trees. ![]() “I don't know where they think the t-shirts come from - they can't imagine a factory. Mr Pugliese said he was worried about exposing the tribe to the modern day world - but they embraced at least one contemporary item. In fact, it is not even close - they are part of nature.” “It highlights how far we have come from where we were. ![]() “They feed the squirrels and monkeys like they feed their kids, breastfeeding,” he said. Mr Pugliese said women in the tribe even breastfeed some of the animals. He said the pets gather food, crack nuts, and protect the tribe at night. For them, it is unbelievable to be a man who does not have a family.”įamily life is a fundamental aspect of the Awa culture, a value which Mr Pugliese said extends to their pets, including pigs, parakeets, squirrels, agouti and monkeys.Īccording to Mr Pugliese, pets are considered family in the same way children are. “I cannot explain to them where I'm coming from, I can't explain the lifestyle to them. “They look at me and they try to give me advice. “They do not understand what a grown man is doing being single, without a family,” he told the Daily Mail. The tribe are protected from modern society and are rarely seen.Photographer Domenico Pugliese claims to be one of the few outsiders who has spent time with the tribe, photographing their way of life. He claimed the main aspect of modern society the tribe did not understand was his single marital status. A photographer has claimed he witnessed a close-to-extinction Amazonian tribe breastfeed their pets until the animals are fully grown.The Awa tribe reside in the forests of eastern Brazil, and face a possible end to their culture, due to European colonists who have enslaved them and stolen their land.
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