

The Awá keep orphaned animals such as monkeys as pets, share their hammocks with racoon-like coatis and split mangoes with green parakeets. Experts believe they use approximately 90% of their forest’s plant species for food, medicine, construction materials and utensils: they are the knowledge-keepers of their environment. Houses are built from lianas, leaves and tree saplings - in just a few hours. Today, there are approximately 360 contacted Awá, and 100 remain uncontacted.įor years their way of life was one of symbiosis with the rainforest the tribe survived - and still survives - largely by hunting for wild pigs, tapirs and monkeys with 6-foot bows, and by gathering nutritious forest produce such as babaçu fruits, açai berries and honey. A nomadic life offered the Awá the best chance of survival, so they fragmented into smaller groups of 20-30 people, which made it easier to stay on the run. They may have been forced to abandon horticulture for a nomadic way of life when white colonists and Portuguese slavers arrived at the turn of the 19th century, bringing with them epidemics of European diseases such as smallpox and measles. The Awá probably originated from the lower Tocantins River of Pará state, where it is likely they were once horticulturalists. It has been home to the Awá tribe, one of the last nomadic hunter-gatherer tribes in Brazil, for generations. It is a beautiful place of savannah, babaçu palm groves and broad-boughed copaiba trees, where howler monkeys and red-necked tamarinds cry from the canopy, the sleek jaguar prowls through the undergrowth and rivers swim with caiman. The western edge of Maranhão state is a region known as Pre-Amazonia, which lies some 300 miles from the Atlantic Ocean. And yet it is also a tale of solidarity and hope. Their tale is a stark account of breathtakingly inhumane massacres, environmental destruction, organized crime, state-level expedience and archaic bigotry. Survival International, the global movement for tribal peoples’ rights, has brought the tribe’s suffering to the world’s attention. They have known decades of massacre and disease at the hands of greedy landowners and corrupt politicians. The Awá are the Earth’s most threatened tribe. The ground squad was part of a government led operation to expel the illegal invaders of the Awá tribe’s lands. Both images are found on Survival International’s website their captions shockingly reveal that the images were taken only fifteen years apart.Īny aerial photographs taken in January 2014 might show a surprising army of military personnel storming this remote region. This is the geometry that signifies decades of deforestation. In another picture, the forest is overlaid with a curious patchwork of white rectangles and squares. They will not survive unless their forest is protected.Captured from 4,000 kms above the Earth in a satellite image, the rainforest in the eastern reaches of the Amazon has the appearance of deep-green brushed suede. The Awá are one of the last remaining nomadic hunter-gatherer tribes in the Amazon.

Over 34% of the Awá Indigenous territory has been deforested. Speaking on the government’s television channel, the President of FUNAI said, ‘The organizations will certainly remain in the area … to monitor the Indigenous areas so that illegal occupations don’t occur again’.
#AWA TRIBE RECENT PROTEST TV#
Last week on TV Globo News in Brazil, Judge Carlos Madeira who ruled that all outsiders must leave the area highlighted the huge international concern for the Awá, revealing he had received 10,000 letters from around the world urging him to act. Last week Padre Ton, a Brazilian Deputy and President of the Parliamentary Group on Indigenous Peoples, denounced the dangers facing the Awá at a conference entitled ‘Awá on the brink of extinction’, convened by the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization at the European Parliament. Nixiwaka Yawanawá, an Amazon Indian in London, said, ‘After so many years fighting, my Awá brothers and sisters are finally seeing a light of hope and a sign that they’ll be able to live in harmony with their forest’. Overflights are currently underway to identify ranches and settlements which have not yet been registered. Settler families have 40 days to leave from the day they receive the notice, and will be given alternative land and access to a range of benefits. © Survival InternationalĪt least 369 evictions orders have now been served, notifying 90% of the territory’s illegal occupants that they must leave. The Awá are Earth's most threatened tribe without their forest, they will not survive.
