The Brazilian government released a video showing a single indigenous man living alone in the forest, without any other human contact for decades.
A man has been living alone in the forest in Brazil for over twenty years after the other members of his indigenous tribe were killed in conflicts. He has survived alone—and a new video shows him energetically chopping down a tree.
Welcome to Episode 74 of Plain English. Today is Monday, August 10, 2018. I’m Jeff, the producer is JR, and you are listening to the perfect podcast for practicing English. That’s because, as you can hear, we go at a little slower speed than native speakers. But also, we have transcripts of every episode online. Today’s transcript can be found at PlainEnglish.com/74, and you will see instant translations from English to Portuguese, Japanese, Spanish, Chinese, French and Italian.
Before we start on the story, I want to just tell you one word. I am going to use the word indigenous a lot in this episode. Indigenous communities are those that existed in an area before colonization. All over the Americas, for example, there are people whose ancestry, whose lineage, goes back to the people who were there before Spain, Portugal, France, Britain, et cetera, came to colonize an area. In the United States, we often refer to indigenous people as Native Americans; in Canada, they are called First Peoples. In the main story, I’ll refer to an indigenous tribe or an indigenous man, and that refers to a tribe or a person whose ancestry and heritage can be traced back to people who were in South America before colonization by Spain and Portugal.
Video of indigenous man living alone in the Amazon
There is a man living in the forest in Brazil who has had no human contact for decades. A new video released by the Brazilian government shows him in the woods chopping down a tree. Though the video is a few years old, the government knows he is still alive—a single person living alone in the Amazon.
This indigenous man’s story is a sad one. He probably belonged to one of the large indigenous tribes that were murdered or expelled by loggers and farmers in the 1970s and 1980s. He probably survived that tragedy and was part of a small, small group of just six survivors living together. Then, in 1995, farmers in the area killed the other five members of his tribe—leaving only this one man. As the sole survivor of that attack, he went back into the forest and has lived alone on this earth ever since. It has been 22 years.
The Brazilian government has a department called Funai that is dedicated to indigenous affairs. Funai has decided that, wherever possible, tribes that have not had contact with the outside world should be able to live in peace, but should have the choice to make friendly contact with the outside world if they want. That is consistent with the current ethical view of how to treat these isolated tribes. Funai goes into the forest every couple of months to check for evidence that the man is still alive. They usually know about where he is in the forest. They have approached him cautiously over the years, but he has rejected their invitations and has shown no interest in developing any type of sustained contact or relationship. He fires an arrow as a warning when anyone approaches him, so he has been left alone.
The video that was recently released was actually recorded in 2011, but came to light for the first time this month. The video captures him through the forest, partially dressed, using an axe to cut down a tree. You can hear the axe hitting the tree and birds chirping in the background. You cannot see his face, but you can see him vigorously chopping amid the lush, green landscape. He appears to be in good health and experts believe he is between 55 and 60 years old.
Funai does help this man in several ways. First, they help by leaving important things for him to find: axes, machetes, and seeds for new plants. Second, the Brazilian government has protected an area of about 20,000 acres, or just over 8,000 hectares, of forest for him to live in. This protected area in the state of Rondônia, near Bolivia, is totally surrounded by farms and ranches. But he has not sought out any type of contact with the outside world—which is understandable given what happened to him. Remember, he has no language in common with anyone else in the world and his only experience with civilization has been deadly conflict.
It is incredible to think that today, in 2018, a human, a person who shares all of our DNA, who is fundamentally no different than any one of us, is living this life. He is living like our ancestors did long, long ago—except without any family connections and any social bonds. He is building his own shelter. He is growing his own food; he grows corn, papaya, bananas and potatoes. He uses a bow-and-arrow to hunt forest pigs, birds and monkeys, sometimes using holes in the forest to trap his prey. He relaxes in a hammock.
This man is an exception because he is living alone, but there are other tribes that live outside civilization. The word that is typically used to describe people in tribes like this is “uncontacted people,” though as the story of our indigenous man shows, they have actually had some contact with the outside world, oftentimes violent contact. Most, if not all, tribes would have at least seen a farm from a distance, or seen or heard an airplane passing above. But to say they are uncontacted generally means that they have not had any meaningful social contact with global civilization. They don’t know about the system of countries and cities and how big the world is—they are isolated from the languages, knowledge, and cultures of any other people besides their own tribe. Uncontacted tribes tend to live in densely forested areas of South America, Asia and Africa.
It is impossible to know how many uncontacted tribes there are in the world, much less how many people are in these tribes. Brazil and the island of New Guinea, in Asia, are thought to be home to the most uncontacted tribes in the world. Funai researchers, for example, believe there are 113 uncontacted tribes in Brazil alone.
Time to say hi to a few people. Genivaldo in Brazil wrote to say he’s tried learning English before and he’s going to try one more time, but this is the last time, and he’s using Plain English. Genivaldo—you’re putting a lot of pressure on JR and me! Your last chance at English? Listen, you’ll do fantastic, just don’t give up okay?
Another listener in Brazil is Ricardo. He was part of a Whatsapp group that recommended Plain English. So there are all kinds of ways to spread the word. Ricardo, Genivaldo—thanks for listening.
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