There Are Still People Left that We Haven't Fucked Over and Conquered.

And they use bows and arrows! And BODY PAINT!!!!!

Benj sent me the link early this morning. The people depicted are part of a tribe in the Envira region of the Brazilian-Peruvian border. We haven't made contact with them yet (with the exception of having flown above them), but a number of other uncontacted tribes in the region have been forced to migrate because of illegal logging.

The history of contact, between indigenous tribes and the outside world, has always been an unhappy one.

Knowing there are still people whose societies were left to evolve at their own pace gives us a good opportunity to correct wrongs made in the past -- mostly by avoiding them altogether. (Let's just hope they don't discover totalitarian agriculture or gun powder anytime soon.)

More photos in the above link. They're amazing.

Update: @stutts pointed out the above tribe was first documented in 1910. The photographs were part of an effort to seek them out for publicity purposes, specifically to compel people to keep them safe, and also to prove indigenous tribe still do exist.

[Photographer] Meirelles ... [argues] that the pictures and video released to the world were powerful and indisputable evidence to those who say isolated tribes no longer exist.

...

But he is determined to keep the tribe's location secret – even under torture, he says. "They can decide when they want contact, not me or anyone else."

Cold, hard reality: reason #4343008594 why Twitter is useful.