Blog 22: Amazonian Tribe Has Only Five People Left

The Belfast Telegraph has an article about the last survivors of a tribe in the Amazon that was once a thriving civilization.

There are only five people left from the Akuntsu tribe. "All of them are either close family relations, or no longer of child-bearing age – meaning that the tribe's eventual disappearance is now inevitable."

The article says that farmers and loggers' greed are the main reasons for the situation of the tribe: "... the new migrant workers knew that one thing might prevent them from creating profitable homesteads from the rainforest: the discovery of uncontacted tribes, whose land is protected from development under the Brazilian constitution. As a result, frontiersmen who first came across the Akuntsu in the mid-1980s made a simple calculation. The only way to prevent the government finding out about this indigenous community was to wipe them off the map."