What would you do if you found out that your home town was actually isolated from the wider world? What if you discovered that people in the rest of the world had technology yet unheard of that improved their lives, allowed them to communicate more easily, and made their homes more comfortable and more safe than you ever thought possible? Most of all, what if those people hardly ever felt pain, their children didn’t get diseases your children commonly suffered from, and they lived for 300 years? And what if you learned that the people of that civilization knew of your ignorance, and had, without consulting you or your political leaders, decided that you must be kept in isolation and ignorance, having decided without your input that it’s for your own good?
If you believe the multiculturist line from this article in the BBC News, you’d be honored at the respect that advanced civilization has for you.
Me, I’d just be torqued off.
The pictures of the “uncontacted tribe” were distributed to prevent encroachment into the territories they live in, which would, of course, make them contacted. This quote, from one of the government agents, says something very interesting:
“We did the overflight to show their houses, to show they are there, to show they exist,” the group quoted Jose Carlos dos Reis Meirelles Junior, an official in the Brazilian government’s Indian affairs department, as saying.
“This is very important because there are some who doubt their existence.”
He described the threats to such tribes and their land as “a monumental crime against the natural world” and “further testimony to the complete irrationality with which we, the ‘civilised’ ones, treat the world”.
If Mr. Meirelles thinks the life of a stone age culture perpetually on the edge of starvation is more “civilised” than the one he lives in, perhaps he should shed his clothes, his desire for plumbing and electricity, and his easy access to food and medical care and just go join them. At least he’d have the option that he’s so determined to deny the Indians themselves.
These tribal members are people. Like all of us, they are human beings with rights and opportunities they were born with, not granted (or not) by a government Indian Affairs department. By keeping them in isolation, we prevent them from making their own well informed decisions, and deny rights to them that we take for granted ourselves. We treat them like zoo animals to be kept in a habitat to be researched and observed. So who is it really who cares about these people’s human rights?
This is nothing more than a soft-hearted tyranny. It is done under the lie that it is for the tribes, but if that was the case, why hasn’t anyone asked them if that’s what they really want? Why do we assume they want to remain in the Stone Age? Our society advanced – don’t they deserve the same opportunity?
