- Brazil’s Indigenous affairs agency, Funai, recently released unprecedented images of a group of nine men from an uncontacted tribe in the Massaco Indigenous Territory, in the Amazon region.
- Funai’s monitoring activities also confirmed the presence of uncontacted groups in the Kawahiva do Rio Pardo Indigenous Territory, also in the Amazon; in the latter case, however, agents also found a campsite set up by outsiders inside the territory, in an area where the isolated tribe had previously been recorded.
- Indigenous rights groups say they’re concerned about the situation of isolated and uncontacted Indigenous groups in Brazil, particularly the Kawahiva, whose presence was only officially confirmed 26 years ago.
- A Supreme Federal Court decision from late 2024 ordered Funai to set up a time frame for completing the demarcation process of the Kawahiva do Rio Pardo territory, which it hasn’t yet published.
Unprecedented images of uncontacted Indigenous people in Brazil’s Massaco Indigenous Territory, in the Amazon region, have prompted a push for greater enforcement to protect the land of these vulnerable populations.
The images, released earlier this month by Funai, the federal agency for Indigenous affairs, revealed a group of nine men, ranging in age from about 20 to 40 years. A trail camera installed in the Indigenous territory had captured the images in February 2024, Funai said, showing the men were collecting machetes and axes left behind by a 2021 expedition. Upon retrieving the data from the camera, officials found — “unsurprisingly” — spiked traps left by the group in the area before they left the site, Funai added.
“We can see that it was a planned and organized approach, with a group of people, only men, most of them young, prepared with countless made-up sticks that were placed in the areas where the non-Indigenous people were present and on the trail itself, where they arrived and returned in case anyone followed them,” Altair Algayer, a Funai sertanista, someone deeply knowledgeable about the remote Brazilian wilderness, said in a news release.
Between January and April 2024, Funai officials recorded traces and activities of uncontacted groups in the Massaco territory. Beyond the traps placed on trails and roads on the borders of territory, the presence of the isolated groups was evidenced on several occasions by temporary shelters, honey and other food collection points, and signs of hunting activity, according to Algayer, who led the expedition and has for the past 30 years been monitoring Indigenous peoples living in voluntary isolation.
Despite the poor quality of the images as a result of weather conditions, the recordings are key to documenting the physical characteristics, behavior, and other aspects of this group, Funai said. The photographic equipment remained intact despite being visible, meaning the Indigenous people didn’t even approach it out of curiosity, Funai said.
“The dissemination of the images seeks to reaffirm the Indigenous presence in the territories and reinforce the need for territorial protection against threats to their survival,” Funai said in the news release.
The Massaco Indigenous Territory sprawls across 421,895 hectares (1.04 million acres) in the Amazonian state of Rondônia. It was fully demarcated in 1998, meaning it was designated for the exclusive occupation of Indigenous peoples of as yet unknown ethnicity living in voluntary isolation. According to Funai, 97.5% of its area overlaps with the Guaporé Biological Reserve.
In the 2024 expeditions to Massaco, Funai said its team’s attention was drawn to the increasingly frequent approach by the Indigenous inhabitants to the edges of the territory, due to the need to expand their area of occupation in search of resources for their survival — and also because of population growth. But this venturing exposes them to contact, both direct and indirect, with non-Indigenous people.
“Another concern is climate change, which significantly alters the cycle of natural resources on which these people depend for their survival,” Algayer said. “Ensuring the full protection of the natural resources of this territory is fundamental for the survival of these people.”
Funai said it has been monitoring the isolated people of the Massaco territory for more than 35 years. It mounts expeditions every year that carry out detailed surveys of the traces that the isolated people leave behind. As a result, the agency has built up data on how they live and develop and how they manage their occupation of the territory, including their nomadic lifestyle and their aptitude for hunting and gathering.
“This data reaffirms the need to protect the isolated [Indigenous people] and the territory where they live, reinforcing vigilance against possible invasions and the importance of actions that guarantee their cultural and physical integrity, always respecting the no-contact policy,” Funai said.
Increasingly agribusiness pressure
Funai’s monitoring activities also confirmed the presence of uncontacted groups in another Indigenous territory last year. A July 2024 expedition in the Kawahiva do Rio Pardo territory in Mato Grosso state found “clear signs” of Indigenous presence there, including footprints, traces of honey collecting, and utensils, including a cumbuca, or bowl, made from the capemba (leaf) of the paxiúba tree, according to Funai. The team also confirmed the presence of children through footprints, it added, with evidence of new families being formed, indicating population growth. There were also reports of abandoned tapiris (huts) and the movement of Indigenous people to more isolated parts of the territory, Funai said.
Jair Candor, who led the expedition, said the monitoring activities aimed to verify the living conditions of the group without getting too close or forcing contact, respecting their autonomy.
“The intention is to gather information in order to draw up and implement more qualified public protection policies for this population,” said Candor, a sertanista who has monitored isolated and uncontacted groups for 36 years.
Unlike the Massaco territory, Kawahiva do Rio Pardo hasn’t been fully demarcated, due to pending litigation, though the borders of the 411,844-hectare (1.02-million-acre) territory were officially delineated.
“We found signs of invasion and very strong pressure around the territory, showing that the [need for] physical demarcation of the Kawahiva do Rio Pardo Indigenous Territory is more than urgent,” Candor in the news release.
According to Funai, the agents found a campsite set up by outsiders inside the territory — possibly miners or copaibeiros, who extract oil from the copaíba tree. The campsite was in an area where the team had recorded heavy occupation by isolated Indigenous people on previous expeditions, reinforcing their suspicion that the latter had moved to another part of the territory.
Funai said the agents left tools, such as axes and machetes, at strategic points and installed motion-triggered camera traps to monitor the Indigenous people without interfering in their routines. According to Candor, there’s a lot of pressure from land grabbers and illegal loggers in the area, and as such the isolated Indigenous people have already had contact with these types of tools in the past, which help them in their daily activities.
As the tools they have wear out, there’s a risk they might try to seek new tools on the surrounding farms, which has happened elsewhere, putting them at serious risk of either violence or a transmissible disease should they come into contact with outsiders, Candor said. “We place these tools every few years inside the forest to prevent them from looking for them on the farms,” he said.
Escalating concerns
Indigenous rights groups have expressed concern about the situation of isolated and uncontacted Indigenous groups in Brazil, particularly in the Kawahiva do Rio Pardo territory. Advocacy group Survival International said it has campaigned for decades for the demarcation of the territory, where the presence of uncontacted groups was only officially confirmed 26 years ago.
“We are very concerned about the Kawahiva,” Fiona Watson, research and advocacy director at Survival International, told Mongabay in a video interview. Kawahiva do Rio Pardo is located within the municipality of Colniza, one of Brazil’s most violent areas; 90% of Colniza’s income is generated from illegal logging, Survival International said.
The group says many Kawahiva individuals have been killed by loggers and ranchers in recent decades, while others have died from diseases caught during contact with outsiders. “Those that survive are the last of the Kawahiva,” the group said.
In 2013, Funai released a unique video from a chance encounter with the Kawahiva in 2011.
In October 2024, a Supreme Federal Court decision ordered Funai to set up a time frame for the conclusion of the demarcation process of the Kawahiva do Rio Pardo Indigenous Territory; it also ordered Funai to present a schedule for carrying out surveillance, inspection and protection activities, with the aim of guaranteeing the integrity of Indigenous lands and preventing invasions.
“Funai says the physical demarcation will be completed by the end of this year. It must be held accountable for this given the increasing pressures on the Kawahiva’s land and the fact the campaign for demarcation has gone on for a quarter of a century,” Watson said.
“The interesting thing is that we have a precedent for it, which is precisely the Massaco territory,” she added, noting that Massaco was the first Indigenous territory in Brazil to be demarcated for an uncontacted Indigenous people.
Watson called it a “really successful” initiative that’s for the most part remained intact. “There’s been a bit of invasion and there are ranches, fazendas, around, in the outskirts, so there’s a bit of pressure. But actually by large it’s OK if you compare it to other territories,” she said.
Funai didn’t respond to Mongabay’s request about the time frame for the Kawahiva do Rio Pardo Indigenous Territory’s demarcation nor about the protection measures for Indigenous territories that have uncontacted and isolated groups.
The agency’s work in identifying isolated and uncontacted Indigenous peoples and publicizing the information is key to protecting them, said Guenter Francisco Loebens, a member of a group focused on uncontacted and isolated peoples at the Indigenist Missionary Council (CIMI), an advocacy group affiliated with the Catholic Church.
“Unfortunately, there is still a great need for people to actually believe that these peoples exist. This information released by Funai ends up helping to achieve this,” Loebens told Mongabay in a phone interview.
Given the intense economic interest in these areas, he added, one of the strategies used by land grabbers targeting isolated peoples’ lands is just that: to deny they even exist. “And, unfortunately, this has happened. There have even been cases, and history has many of them, in which these economic interests have wiped out all traces of their existence, precisely in order to be able to appropriate the lands of these peoples.”
In the states of Mato Grosso and Rondônia, entire Indigenous communities have disappeared and even been massacred because of this strategy of making them invisible, Loebens said. “This is an imminent risk for these groups, especially those not officially recognized by the Brazilian state. And therein lies the great demand in terms of protecting these peoples.”
More consistent information about the presence of these peoples is key to pressuring the government to take measures to protect these vulnerable groups, Loebens added. According to him, more than 80 isolated Indigenous groups have been reported and are yet to be recognized by the government.
Banner image: Brazil’s Indigenous affairs agency, Funai, released in January 2025 unprecedented images of a group of nine men from an uncontacted tribe in the Massaco Indigenous Territory, in the Amazon region. Image courtesy of Funai.
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Karla Mendes is a staff investigative and feature reporter for Mongabay in Brazil and a member of the Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Investigations Network. She is the first Brazilian and Latin American ever elected to the board of the Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ); she was also nominated Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Chair. Read her stories published on Mongabay here. Find her on 𝕏, Instagram, LinkedIn, Threads and Bluesky.
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