Comments on: Comments on 6873

Post number 6873

rschram — Mon, 09 Apr 2001 10:25:05 -0800

"Uncontacted" tribe contacted in Javari region of Amazon
A team of Brazilian anthropologists has made contact with a group of indigenous people in the Amazon region. They had initially only wanted to learn about uncontacted groups indirectly, but chose to seek out this group to make sure they weren't being exploited by a neighboring group.

By: darren

darren — Mon, 09 Apr 2001 10:38:54 -0800

Sounds like those antropologists are in big trouble for disobeying the Prime Directive.

By: tolkhan

tolkhan — Mon, 09 Apr 2001 10:47:41 -0800

and what would the anthropologists have done if the tribe was being exploited by the neighboring group?

By: eljuanbobo

eljuanbobo — Mon, 09 Apr 2001 11:01:12 -0800

NEWS FLASH: Instead of being exploited by a neighboring tribe, which woudl fall nder natural selection, they will now be exploited by the western world, including wonders of media hype, disease, fundraising, and other such exploitations. The only group who opposes such an exploitation is the neighboring religious sects, who until recently had been able to exploit these indigenous people with no interference from those "damnable anthropologists". [/sarcasm]

By: daveadams

daveadams — Mon, 09 Apr 2001 11:12:32 -0800

Not just the Prime Directive, but also the Heisenberg Principle. Quantum Anthropology, anyone?

By: john

john — Mon, 09 Apr 2001 13:54:01 -0800

Was the tribe really lost or were they just trying to be hard to find? Could they be Alec Baldwin's tribe that left after Bush went into office?

By: owen

owen — Mon, 09 Apr 2001 14:50:31 -0800

When I heard about this on NPR this morning I thought of the same thing... the Prime Directive. Do anthropologists have a Prime Directive? Or have we rooted out so many indegenous populations that it's too late for one? Would an anthropologist's Prime Directive mean the scientist couldn't bring a pencil and paper? What about clothes? And how safe would a naked pasty-skinned prof be in that situation?

By: th3ph17

th3ph17 — Mon, 09 Apr 2001 15:09:55 -0800

safe for him/herself or for the native people? me naked in a jungle would scar anyone who was present.

By: rschram

rschram — Mon, 09 Apr 2001 15:30:28 -0800

Would an anthropologist's Prime Directive mean the scientist couldn't bring a pencil and paper?

If this is the standard of what counts as impact, then it's far far far too late for anthropologists. Recall that there had been about 250-300 years of contact between Europeans and people in the New World, more in other places, that one might consider "exotic" by the time anything approximating anthropological fieldwork appears.

By: Rebis

Rebis — Mon, 09 Apr 2001 20:00:34 -0800

The whole story sounds somewhat dubious. If the tribe, as the article states, "already had contact with our world through traded objects," then I'm not sure what "uncontacted" really means. Either by real-world anthropological standards, or by Star Trek standards, these people already had contact with "us." The myth of a society following its "normal cultural evolution" without outside interference (as the Prime Directive puts it) is just that--a myth, usually a Western fantasy projection about supposedly "unspoiled primitives." Does anybody remember the "Gentle Tasaday"? They were a supposed tribe discovered in the Philippines in the 1970s, who supposedly had never had any contact with outside civilization. It later turned out that the existence of the tribe was a total hoax--basically a scam by people in the corrupt Marcos government to make money by creating international excitement over the supposed find, attracting scientific expeditions, etc; with local peasants terrorized into playing the roles of "primitive tribespeole."