Missionaries using secret audio devices to evangelise Brazil’s isolated peoples | Amazon rainforest
Missionary groups use audio devices in protected territories of the tropical forest to attract and evangelize isolated or recently contacted Amazonian peoples. A joint investigation by the newspaper Guardian and Brazilian O Globo reveals that solar energy devices reciting biblical messages in Portuguese and Spanish appeared among the members of the Korubo people in the Javari valley, near the border of Brazil-Peru.
The drones were also identified by Brazilian state agents responsible for protecting the areas. Gadgets have raised concerns about illegal missionary activities, despite strict government measures designed to protect isolated native groups.
Quick guide
What are the “unused peoples”?
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The people who are not contacted, or “the peoples in voluntary isolation”, avoid contact with modern society to protect their lifestyle and remain safe from violence or exploitation. They live in remote areas such as tropical forests and deserts, now traditional cultures free from external influence. Governments and organizations aim to protect their rights and territories to prevent diseases, cultural disturbances and exploitation, safeguarding their autonomy and their land.
What is contact?
In anthropology, “contact” means interactions between cultural or social groups. Individuals “contacted” have continuous relations with society. Contact can be direct, for example trade or conflicts, or indirect, such as the transmission of the disease. These are cultural exchanges and economic interactions. Colonial contact has often imposed systems that disrupted native cultures. Brief or accidental interactions do not count as contact.
Where are their territories?
Most unused peoples live in the Amazon basin, especially in Brazil and Peru, often in protected areas. Others are in Gran Chaco, the Andaman Islands, North Sentinel Island and Western Papua. The Amazon basin, a large region covering several countries in South America, including Brazil, Peru, Colombia and Ecuador, is home to the largest number of communities not disputed, with estimates suggesting that there could be dozens of these groups living in isolation. Western Brazil and Eastern Peru are known to have some of the last unisposed groups, including some who live in voluntary isolation in protected Aboriginal territories and national parks.
Is it essential to protect the incontent peoples?
Some are opposed to protection, citing a lack of modern advantages, concerns about the use of land or security problems. The defenders argue that they survive with natural resources, contact between damage and evangelization, weakens cultures. They emphasize the rights of these peoples in their territories and the inability of governments to ensure their security. Even after contact, indigenous peoples have rights in their complete traditional territories according to certain national and international standards.
Why is the idea controversial?
Governments and NGOs are trying to protect the territories of unconfined peoples against logging, mining and agriculture when they threaten their survival. Delimit protected areas reduce human activity and preserve the lifestyle within them. In some countries, such as Brazil, legislation obliges the government to delimit indigenous territories in the event of identification of un disputed peoples – a measure which is often in conflict with economic interests linked to land rights and use.
We do not think we are the first recent attempt at missionary groups to reach isolated and unattended communities in the Javari valley. Shortly before the pandemic, a group of us and Brazilian citizens affiliated with evangelical churches would have planned to contact the Koubo people. It was said that they had used tanks to map the trails and locate long houses.
Three missionaries were identified as planning these alleged contact efforts: Thomas Andrew Tonkin, Josiah McIntyre and Wilson by Benjamin Kannenberg, linked to the Missão Novas Tribos makes the brasil (New Tribes Mission of Brazil – MNTB) and a humanitarian group known as Socorro – or relief wings. They were prohibited from entering the Aboriginal territory by ordinance of the court during the crisis coded.
Now it appeared that the missionaries returned to the Javari valley and the surrounding cities, such as Atalaia Do Norte, with a new tool.
The first device discovered, a unit the size of a yellow and gray mobile phone, has mysteriously appeared in a village in Korubo in the Javari valley recently. The gadget, which recites the Bible and the inspiring talks of an American Baptist, can do so indefinitely, even out of network, thanks to a solar panel. Up to seven of the units have been reported by the local population, but photo and video evidence has been obtained for only one.
A message on the device located by the Guardian says: “Let’s see what Paul says by considering his own life in the Philippians Chapter 3, verse 4:” If someone else thinks that they have reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more “.”
The Brazilian government does not allow proselytism on the territory of Korubo. Its policy, dating from 1987, stipulates that isolated groups must start all contact, a position that made Brazil a pioneer in compliance with indigenous self -determination.
The state also strictly controls access, to protect the Korubo and other unisposed peoples in the region against current diseases to which they have little or no immunity.
The apparatus which reached the hands of the Korubo is called Messenger and is distributed by the Baptist organization of Touch Ministeries, based in Atlanta, in Georgia. It is now a curiosity in possession of the matriarch of the Korubo community, Mayá.
In contact does not sell the messenger. The devices are given to “not affected” people in the countries of the world and are available in more than 100 languages. With its solar panel and integrated torch, the device is designed to bring the gospel to places that lack reliable electricity or internet connections.
In an interview with The Guardian, Seth Gray, a chief ministry’s exploitation, confirmed that the organization uses devices such as the messenger and that “it is designed for functionality, solar energy, with a flashlight”. “Then they discover the content,” he said, adding that the device is strong enough for the “listening groups” of 20 people.
Gray said he had personally delivered 48 of the devices to the people of Wai Wai in the Brazilian Amazon four years ago. They contained religious content in their language and Portuguese. The Wai Wai engaged with American missionaries, who contacted and proselytized among the communities of the northern Amazon, for decades, according to anthropologist Catherine V Howard.
Gray said, however, that the messenger should not be present in the Javari valley in violation of Brazilian policy. “We are not going anywhere, we are not allowed,” he said, referring to the staff in contact. He said he was aware of the missionaries of the “other organizations” which transport the devices to the regions and the countries where they are prohibited.
The Korubo, known for their deadly expertise with war clubs, are recently contacted people and therefore a great interest in certain missionaries focused on preaching in “unreated”.
The SGT Cardovan Da Silva Soeiro, a military police officer in the government’s protection post at the entrance to the native territory of the Javari Valley, said that he had learned the aircraft of an indigenous person stationed at the base.
“I sent a relationship with the photos to the police information, but so far, we have heard nothing in return. The indigenous peoples did not want to give me the devices, so I thought it is better not to insist. I just managed to get the images,” he said.
Cardovan said the military police were aware of the presence of missionaries who would have been linked to another Christian group, Jehovah’s Witnesses. “Some of these religious entities most likely try to get closer,” he said.
He also pointed out to the police to command the presence of “mysterious drones” which had recently appeared above the base, generally at the end of the afternoon. Cardovan has been ordered to shoot them down, but so far, he has not been able to do so.
“We do not know if they belong to missionaries, drug traffickers, fishermen or minors who look at the base to see if they have a free passage here. When I received the order of the command to shoot down, I targeted my rifle, but the drone fled at high speed. It seemed very sophisticated,” he said.
Daniel Luís Dalberto, an agent of the office of the federal prosecutor who monitors the rights of unisposed and recently contacted peoples, said that the key point to understand the presence of missionaries is not how there are in the territory, “but rather the change of methods like those of the radios which now emerge”.
“It’s a stealth, hidden, under radar conversion,” he said. “The method has become sophisticated and difficult, almost impossible to fight.”
