Rare drone footage shows Amazon tribe in their camp
Very rare drone footage from Amazonas, Brazil shows members of a tribe walking through their jungle camp.
Remarkable drone footage offers a rare glimpse of an isolated tribe in the Brazilian Amazon.
In the 51-second clip released by FUNAI, the Brazilian government's Indian Affairs department, tribespeople are shown moving through a deforested area in the jungle and one tribe member appears to be carrying a bow and arrow.
The agency said it captured the drone shots during an expedition last year to monitor isolated communities, but only released them on Tuesday to protect their study. FUNAI also released still images showing the tribespeople’s existence in the remote region.
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Researchers monitored the tribe in Vale do Javari, an indigenous territory in the southwestern part of the state of Amazonas. There are 11 confirmed isolated groups in the area, more than anywhere else in Brazil.
One of the images released by FUNAI (Acervo/Funai/2017)
The footage has racked up more than 129,000 views since it was posted on YouTube.
The agency has been studying the community in the images for years, but this was the first time it was able to catch it on camera.
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"These images have the power to make society and the government reflect on the importance of protecting these groups," said Wallace Bastos, Funai's president.
Sarah Shenker, a senior researcher at tribal advocacy group Survival International, told Fox News that the images like the ones released by FUNAI are a powerful tool. Glimpses of uncontacted tribes "galvanize public support for the need to protect their lands," she said, noting that FUNAI has suffered drastic budget cuts. "We're calling for the teams that are on the ground ... to have the resources they need to do their job properly," Shenker added.
Earlier this year, FUNAI released extremely rare video footage showing the last surviving member of an uncontacted tribe that was massacred in 1995.
Dubbed “the world’s loneliest man,” the solitary figure is also known as “the Indian of the hole,” according to FUNAI, on account of the stave-filled holes he digs to trap animals.
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The incredible and undated video quickly went viral.
FUNAI says that it has evidence of 107 isolated Indian groups within the Amazon.
In 2016, incredible aerial images were released showing an uncontacted tribe that experts warn could be in danger of being wiped out.
The photos revealed a village in northern Brazil’s remote Yanomami indigenous territory that is estimated to be home to around 100 people.
In the same year, photos emerged of tribespeople living deep in the rainforest of the western Brazilian state of Acre.
The Associated Press and Matt Roper contributed to this article.
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