World’s Largest Isolated Tribe Makes Rare Appearance After Loggers Move In

This region has been increasingly encroached upon by loggers.

This makes them the largest uncontacted tribe globally.

Typically, they avoid contact with the outside world.

They are also trying to distance themselves from the advancing loggers, according to the Indigenous rights group Fenamad.

“These incredible images show that a large number of isolated Mashco Piro live alone a few kilometers from where the loggers are about to start their operations,” said Caroline Pearce, director of Survival International.

“The logging workers could bring in new diseases which would wipe out the Mashco Piro, and there’s also a risk of violence on either side, so it is very important the territorial rights of the Mashco Piro are recognized and protected in law.”

Another group of 17 was seen near Puerto Nuevo, according to Survival International.

This location is 90 miles from Puerto Maldonado, the capital of Madre de Dios.

“They flee from loggers on the Peruvian side.”

“They leave behind a lot of turtle shells. They are a people with no peace, restless, because they are always on the run,” Padilha said.

Canales Tahuamanu, one such company, has constructed over 120 miles of roads for logging trucks to extract timber.

This is not the first time the Mascho Piro have had to flee their homes. In 2011 and 2013, the Indigenous community emerged from the forest in what many called an action for attention from the outside world.

“The Mashco Piro are desperate. Those arrows are the proof,” Julio Cusurichi, an Indigenous leader and an activist who has been recognized for his efforts protecting Indigenous peoples and the Amazon rainforest, told the Washington Post in May. “They would not have acted that way unless they were forced to.”

The company did not respond to any publications for a request on why they have continued logging in the area.

The company is certified by the Forest Stewardship Council and manages 130,000 acres of forests in Madre de Dios for cedar and mahogany extraction.

“This is a humanitarian disaster in the making – it’s absolutely vital that the loggers are thrown out, and Mashco Piro’s territory is properly protected at last. The FSC must cancel its certification of Canales Tahuamanu immediately – failure to do so will make a mockery of the entire certification system,” the Survival International group writes.

Chau ultimately lost his life after the Sentinelese Tribe shot him with arrows. Knowing that this was the potential outcome of his journey, Chau wrote in his diary, “I think it’s worthwhile to declare Jesus to these people. Please do not be angry at them or at God if I get killed … Don’t retrieve my body.”

Despite these few interactions, researchers have generally understood the Sentinelese tribe’s actions through the rare documents that mention the tribe’s name.

Few documents have survived that detail colonizers’ experience with the tribe.

Portman’s role was to “civilize” communities in the area, and attempted to do so to the Sentinelese tribe by capturing six of the islanders and bringing them to Port Blair to be studied for “science.”

The man and the woman passed by, while the still-infected children returned to their community. The lack of immunity to contemporary illnesses created an endemic in the community.

“This expedition was not a success. We cannot be said to have done anything more than increase their general terror of, and hostility to, all comers,” Portman wrote, reflecting on one of his failed missions.

Eventually, these attempts to befriend the tribe have been unsuccessful and often met with animosity. Since 1996, gift-dropping visits have stopped when officials decided it was best to leave the people of North Sentinel Island in peace.

On their website, Survival International writes: “Intergenerational trauma from this experience may account for the Sentinelese’s continued hostility and rejection of outsiders.”