NON FICTION: The Last of the Tribe: The Epic Quest to Save a Lone Man in the Amazon, By Monte Reel, Scribner, 285pp. £18.99
EVEN IF the encounter is well intentioned, in meetings between outsiders and indigenous people, the latter are nearly always the losers. This is a central theme of this intriguing book on the search to find the sole surviving member of an Amazon tribe.
I received a memorable lesson about this some years ago in Africa. Chatting to a young, well-educated Kenyan woman working for an Irish development agency, I tentatively began asking how she assessed the impact of Western involvement in Africa. She stopped me in mid-sentence: “I know what you’re going to say and my answer is this: we Africans would have been a thousand times better off if you Europeans had never set foot here”. Her response silenced me; maybe it was the collective “you Europeans” that stung.
The Indians of the Amazon rainforest comprise 2 per cent of Brazil’s population and hold 12 per cent of the land, a positive statistic but one that hides a harsh reality. Loggers make non-stop incursions into Indian lands, clearing trees to produce hardwoods for consumers from Tokyo to London. In 1996, in Rondônia state alone, an area twice the size of Wales was cleared of trees. Ironically much of the farmland “developed” in this way is poor quality and supports very few crops.
Dazzled by the seemingly limitless resources of the Amazon region, the Brazilian government has been largely indifferent to the fate of the Indians. Laws banning logging are almost never enforced, while a small band of committed staff from state agencies such as Contact Front, the heroes of this book, struggle to preserve the Indian way of life against corrupt politicians, pistoleros, big ranch owners and loggers.
The central character in this book is an anonymous Indian who is the last surviving member of his tribe in the rainforest and lives a self-sufficient life of total isolation. Members of Contact Front were determined to find him to convince the government of his existence and thus preserve his tribal lands. Occasionally they stumble on the Indian and try to win his trust, leaving gifts of fruit, manioc and tools. The encounters are tense, some lasting for hours as he may have recalled other occasions when ranchers gave his tribesmen bags of sugar laced with arsenic. Throughout the rare encounters he utters only one word, to warn one man as he approaches a spiked hunting pit.
The Indians of the rainforest are a diverse group. Tribal differences and rivalries are entrenched, as seen in the author’s poignant account of two hostile tribes with less than half a dozen ageing members who face extinction but still attack and kill each other, thus accelerating their own demise.
This book highlights a crucial paradox. Pursuing the lone Indian like an exotic specimen, his “rescuers” ran the risk of destroying the way of life they fought to preserve. As one staff member said: “Once you make contact, you begin the process of destroying their universe.” Even the gift of a machete raised ethical dilemmas about replacing traditional tools.
At one point they were tempted to seize the Indian but fortunately decided that preserving the mystery of a man living his life in total isolation was more valuable than the how or why. They then refined their overall goal to simply protecting his territory from loggers and checking each month that he was alive.
This book is a straightforward and lively narration of events, well told and quite moving at times. But it is short on detailed analysis and does not really address that crucial issue raised by the author: should you rescue someone from a deadly threat if in the process you begin to undermine the very way of life you are trying to preserve?
Fergus Mulligan's latest book is Trinity College Dublin: A Walking Guide, published by Trinity College Library in July
