tracking elusive Amazon group to save their land

A ceramic pot and the shell of a turtle, formerly driven for its meat, are the most recent traces of an indigenous community which lived deep in the Amazon of North Brazilian.

Archaeological discoveries like these continue to present themselves and go back to at least 2009, the members of a neighboring clan claiming to have seen people who live in the region of Ituna / Itata in the north of the state of Brazil.

For the moment, the nameless and elusive people – perhaps belonging to more than one group – are brought together among dozens of so -called “uncomplicated” communities who have traveled the largest tropical forest in the world.

“My sister-in-law said to me:” There! “And it was a little boy who looked closely at me,” said Takamyi Asurini, an older of Ita’aka – an indigenous village of around 300, whose close meetings have fed theories of the existence of people not disputed in Itana / Itata.

Asurini showed AFP a scar on his ribs which, according to him, was the result of an ball with an arrow by an unknown person in the jungle.

These testimonies and found objects are not considered as proof of the existence of people in Ituna / Itata.

But it is enough that the region is enjoying a provisional protected status intended to prevent the invasions of minors, loggers and breeders – taking up both the forest and the people who live there.

The area covers tens of thousands of hectares and is similar to Sao Paolo – the largest city in Latin America.

It has become one of the most outdated indigenous territories in Brazil under the former president Jair Bolsonaro, a contributor to the agro-industry on the watch to the deforestation of Amazon.

From now on, lobbies groups want the protection of the ITuna / Itata region to be made permanent, which would mean the rules of use of more strict land and the application.

‘Historical neglect’

For this to happen, the National Foundation of Aboriginal Peoples of the Government (FUNAI) should send expeditions to seek undeniable evidence of the existence of the group.

Part of the challenge is that the dense Amazon jungle is home to rich and varied ecosystems that support migratory agriculture for indigenous peoples, which can go hunting, fishing and consumption of seasonal food.

Under the law, not all researchers can get in touch with them – potentially putting them at risk of diseases to which they have no immunity – but are rather to seek footprints of their lives in the forest.

Brazil recognizes 114 unusted “unattained” groups that live with a non -minimal or minimal interaction with the others.

About a quarter is “confirmed”, while for the rest – as in iTuna / Itata – there is “solid proof” that they exist.

For Luiz Fernandes, member of the coordination of the Umbrella group of Aboriginal Organizations in the Brazilian Amazon (COIAB), there has been a “historical negligence” of the question of the State, which says “recognizes the possibility of the existence of these peoples but does not guarantee effective measures to protect the territory”.

Adding Mita Xipaya, an indigenous activist: “The state needs qualified records” to prove that an area hosts unprecedented people “, but for us, it is different: we perceive them in nature, in the sounds we hear, their presence, sometimes their smells.”

‘Take care of the forest’

The Brazilian Amazon has lost almost a third of its native vegetation since the start of files in 1988, according to the environment of NGOs from the Socio -Ambient Institute – with the exception of Aboriginal territories where the figure is less than two percent.

From 2019 to 2022, the Bolsonaro government suspended the provisional protective measures decreed for Ituna / Itata, which prompted an invasion by striking, transforming it into the most deforested Aboriginal area in Brazil.

Although protection was reintegrated under his successor on the left Luiz Inacio Lula Da Silva, the consequences persist and the plots of soil miles devastated between the areas between the Tropical Green Forest, was observed during a recent overview.

Brazil will host the COP30 Non Climate Conference in November in November in the Amazon city of Belem under Lula, which sought to position itself as a leader in forest preservation and the fight against global warming.

“It is not only a question of taking care of the forest but also of the people who inhabit it, because it is through them that the forest remains standing,” Coiab coordinator Toya Manchineri told AFP.

© 2025 AFP