Since there’s so much insinuation about the motives of the “no-contact” people flying around here (Luddites?!), I’ll ask the “pro-contact” people here back:
what are your real motives? Not that shit about gangrenous children or women being enslaved, your real motives?
Because in the history of contact with tribes or people on a less-advanced technology level, there were 99.99% the following motives:
Exploitation: land, fur, gold, trees and plants, knowledge, slave power.
Conversion: missionaries wanting to convert the natives to the one true faith (showing both disrespect and paternalism). Causing a lot of secondary troubles, e.g. forbbidding polygamy in Africa, when it was useful for children to have more than one nursing mother. Also dragging the converted natives into their religious wars, since more than one westen religion sent missionaries.
So what are your motives?
Don’t keep telling me the lies about the poor children, because none of the people whoe are in the least bit informed about the real conditions in those part of the world will buy that, unless you step up to the challenge offered several times of helping the already contacted tribes get better.
Tell us if your interest is with the gold miners, the tree loggers or the really rich people who want the land.
The culture you want to expose those tribes to is western-oriented and therefore, white-man oriented. Although Brasilia is a mixed-race country, in real-life society there is (like in the US) a stratification according to colour, with the full-blood Indians at the bottom, mixed-race in the middle, higher if lighter, and white people holding the money and power at the top.
And contact is not about one anthropologist, but about the govt. trying to protect this area from exploitation against the interest of rich business people - who are usually white.
Nice of you to show your your true cold heart underneath the “poor children” excuse. Yes, how terrible of the “do-gooders” to complain and point out that millions of people live in terrible conditions! Why, if they just told everybody about how wonderful America is, all problems would be solved!
You mean, like helpers have been trying to teach poor people in Africa and in slums all oever the world for over three decades to not drink unclean water to protect against waterbourne illness? Are you really that ignorant or deliberatly uncaring that you don’t know how much money and effort it costs to build one well for a village to get clean water, and how many villages there are? And that in many cases they are tapping fossil water which will run out soon?
Because telling people “Don’t drink water from that mudhole, it’s too close to where the animals shit” is useless without providing another clean water source. Telling people “Boil unsafe water for 10 min to make it safe” is useless if there is not enough fuel for the fire because there are no trees in the desert. That’s why they recently developed solar water purification with plastic bottles using UV in the sunlight. That’s why the WHO developed Oral Rehydration Kits and a simple recipe that can be taught to mothers everywhere as it requires only water, salt and sugar.
Do you know how many people live in poverty, how many miles the villages are apart, and how many teachers you would need to reach everybody and tell them about this new method in, say, one year, and how many people are actually willing to help instead of playing armchair philosophy like you do? Arrogantly deciding that others are doing it wrong without helping yourself is not concern for poor children, it’s heartless.
A belief that even you could find something in thousands of years of scientific and cultural progress that would make their lives better. That, and a distaste for people who seem to think ignorance and isolation is inherently superior to knowledge, and value a culture more than the people living in it.
How terrible for you to do that and then conclude that the only way to avoid doing the same thing is a completely isolationist stance, that the only way to avoid doing bad is to never do anything at all. It’s cowardice, that’s what it is.
Since I quite clearly said I come down on the side of leaving them alone but that I just don’t think it is a cut and dry issue without any moral ambiguities, I assume you meant to use an example from someone else?
I strongly oppose it. These peoples are living in primitive conditions resembling those that the rest of the world lived in a 100,000 years ago. They live miserable, brutish, and short lives, why shouldn’t we reduce their suffering. They can decide how to live when given the choice of the modern world or their society-I am pro-choice in this regard.
Thank God the impoverished people who live in the favelas have lives that are nothing like those that people lived 100,000 years ago.
This is the crux of the matter, that people can’t seem to understand. You aren’t offering them a choice between suburban life and hunter-gatherer life. You’re offering them a choice between impoverished street life and hunter-gatherer life. They aren’t going to move to town and become doctors and lawyers. As I’ve said about a dozen times, we can simply look that the example of the hundreds of contacted indigenous groups in Brazil.
It isn’t like their lives are radically better now that they’ve been taught the germ theory of disease, and can trade for machetes and rum. If you really think you could improve the lives of a hunter-gatherer tribe by teaching them the basics of science and medicine and engineering, try going to Brazil and “helping” one of the tribes that is in regular contact with outsiders. It’s fucking ridiculous to think that the contacted tribes have much better lives in comparison to uncontacted tribes because they’ve been taught about germ theory.
It’s not that living as a hunter-gatherer in the jungle is such an awesome life. It is a tough life. But is it tougher than living in a slum, or as an agricultural slave? Because that’s the alternative for these people. And the proof is the experience of the ALREADY CONTACTED TRIBES. If there was such a great benefit for them, why aren’t these contacted tribes prospering?
Constanze, knock it off immediately. Your comments about other people’s motives are uncalled for and not appropriate for this forum. If you want to discuss the historical reasons large civilizations have made contact with native tribes, go ahead. But stop attributing sinister motives to other posters in this thread.
I don’t think my post was parsed very well…you seemed to have missed the point of the quotes of mine your referring to, and offered a direct counter to “…running off to live in the woods in their underwear” in a fashion that doesn’t meet the point of what I was getting at.
Re-read the OP dude.
The basics are about all I know, but seeing as to how that is the case, I almost feel I could give you some pointers. When engaging in a discussion with other groups of human beings, calling them an idiot via academic jargon with the sneaky belief it will be viewed strictly as logical whit, and thereby cutting corners to your goal of out-reasoning someone, it helps to start on a much more friendly basis of discussion. That way, when you really want to literately elongate a feeling of, “That guy is dumb,” you theoretically should be able to accomplish your goal, at least in appearance to others, much more successfully.
…You’re right…lets just do nothing, because anything we humans do ends up horribly awry.
Rats, you got me…I’m really a member of the Criminals Attacking Natives lobby group, and in my spare time I come on here and try to convince people we’re good guys…
Wow. This post is really astonishing. The way you write is as if only in the West have we seen thousands of years of scientific and cultural progress!
Do you really think that is the case?!
The Indians cultures change just as much as they do in the West - no tribes live today as they did thousands of years ago. And as for scientific knowledge, are you aware that not only did indigenous tribal peoples first learn to farm animals, and domesticate plants like maize, potato and manioc (which today are the staple food for billions of people worlwide), but that over half of today’s ‘modern’ medicines are derived from plant extracts first used by tribal peoples.