Explorer reveals the one heartbreaking question uncontacted tribe asked him as he shares rare footage
Topics: Community, World News, Podcast
Britt Jones
Featured Image Credit: The Diary of a CEO/YouTube/Jungle Keepers
Topics: Community, World News, Podcast
A conservationist said an uncontacted tribe in the Amazon asked him just one thing when his advocacy group was able to get close.
The Amazon jungle is vast, and within it are the homes of an estimated 400 tribes, spread out between nine nations.
While some have taken to more modern ways thanks to allowing people into their living areas, others refused to interact with the outside world at all.
One of those tribes was being followed by Paul Rosolie’s conservation group, Junglekeepers, who work to protect the rainforest from loggers, miners, and narcotic dealers in the area.
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Rosolie, an explorer, spent a few years living in the Amazon, aiming to get closer to the people he and his team protect. He was eventually allowed in for a short time, which he documented and recently released the footage of.
However, when appearing in Steven Bartlett’s Diary Of A CEO podcast, he revealed they had one-pointed question for his people.
In the YouTube video, Rosolie - who once tried to let a snake 'eat him alive' - explained that the tribe came out of the trees to meet his team because they were tired of not knowing who the enemy was.
He said that people ‘will go looking for them’, but for ‘hundreds of years, these people have asked for one thing and one thing only, to be left alone’.
This is said to be why they use things like arrows to protect their peace.
Particularly recently, which the explorer said has been a time of conflict for the tribe who are being ‘hunted’ by ‘narco’ dealers, miners and loggers.
To suss out what was going on, he revealed the tribe came out to ask, telling host Bartlett: “And on this day, they said, ‘Please give us food. Please give us rope.’ And they had one other question. They said, ‘How do we tell the bad guys from the good guys?’”
Rosolie went on to say he was confused by this, and responded: “What do you mean? Who are the bad guys?”
To this, the tribe apparently responded: “Some of you shoot at us with.”
Calling the guns ‘fire sticks’, Rosolie said they wanted to know who was the threat to them.
The explorer noted it was the hostile groups that were boxing in the tribe, causing deforestation and a decline in their numbers.
Rosolie added that the tribe asked him to ‘stop cutting down our trees. Our trees are our gods. It was sort of like, “You don't do that”’.
He went on to say that they only realized what was happening to them by outsiders weeks later, and understood that they were not aware that the Junglekeepers were there in peace, trying to protect their land.
To them, all outsiders were a potential threat.
This is why the Mashco Piro tribe in Peru's Manú National Park, fired arrows at loggers in the Amazon, in an area that is thought to be illegal, CBS News reports.
The July 2024 incident saw one seriously injured.
But in 2022, two loggers were shot with arrows while fishing, and one was fatally injured.
Survival International previously told UNILAD: “The attack provides further evidence of just how important – and urgent – it is for the whole Mashco Piro territory to be properly protected.
“It reinforces the need for all the logging licenses in the Mashco Piro territory to be revoked, as it is impossible to protect the lives of either the Mashco Piro or the logging workers.”