In this world of vast swaths of heavily populated people, and networks of highways stretching in every direction so one never seems far from the sound of a ringing cell phone, it seems easy to forget just how much of our planet's surface remains largely unexplored outside of satellite images. And even now with technology and expansion reaching new heights previously unknown, footage of a tribe we didn't even know existed before recently has been released.
From a remote operated camera operated from an outpost designed to catch illegal logging operations, the group was seen emerging from the woods to gather water from a creek bed. After a delegation of individuals emerged to make contact with the tribe, the unknown people found themselves in a vastly expanded and stranger universe than they could have possibly anticipated.
Uncontacted tribes are always a matter of sociological and anthropological interest to people looking to study human nature. The ways of these groups, largely different than any from our current society, reveal a world that seems like it could just as easily be on a different planet from what so many in the surroundings so many of us live in. Societies worldwide are almost all networked together either directly or indirectly with people communicating across the planet in a matter of seconds. On the other hand, the people of this nation go about their daily lives almost entirely unaware or uninterested in our societies.
When learning of a new tribe such as that discovered in Kugapakori Nahua Nanti, several ethical considerations should be made. Is it right to contact such an isolated society at all? Are there reasons we should remain distant from them to ensure no major shift takes place between our society and their way of life? If we do decide to contact them, in what way should we accomplish such a task? If there are sick or dying in their tribe, should we use our technology in an attempt to save them, or will this cripple their belief systems and ultimately cause them to depend on a world that is not always entirely benevolent?
In looking at the ethical considerations that must be required when contacting a thus far unknown tribe of people, it seems almost comparable to the considerations an alien race would have to make when contacting our planet. To simply land on the Whitehouse lawn would likely be a fairly irresponsible act that could change our planet in terrible and unforeseen ways. But is there a process by which we as a world would be able to accept the larger picture of visiting beings without losing our own cultures and ways of life?
INDEPA, the National Institute of Development of Andean, Amazonian and Afro-Peruvians is the organization trained in the contacting of unknown tribes. Workers from this organization were deployed to interact with the native people here in a way that was considered low risk to the individuals as well as the political structure of the tribe itself.
