Is it moral to leave tribes alone in the modern world?

[mids2019]

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2024/dec/22/exclusive-photographs-reveal-first-glimpse-of-uncontacted-amazon-community-massaco

Never really understood the reluctance for more intervention with remote people when they are citizens of Brazil and are therefore under the same laws as the rest of the Brazilian populace, have the same right to healthcare, education etc. Also they should have the right to vote in Brazil's democrqcy.

It just feels like a human zoo and sits badly with me.....

They should be left alone.

What do you mean by " human zoo" ?

They live differently from you, they aren't Animals.

How do we determine if children are being looked after properly or they are offered modern healtcare. Surely denial of these things to the tribe's children could be tantamount to abuse?

Well setting up cameras for observation to me is more familiar with wild life documentaries. No it's not a zoo and these are people who should be welcomed into the wider community as citizens of a country.

So people may live differently to you but that is not an excuse to not offer such things as women modern healthcare during birth etx. The people are citizens of Brazil and would surely be ranked as impoverished and offered assistance?

Are they asking for assistance?

What's so great about the modern world?

It wasn't that long ago a bunch of white men came to Canada and decided to bring
"Civilization" to indigenous people.

This did not go well for us.

My family is still suffering the consequences.

your idea of what is best doesn’t make it best. We should leave them alone. In fact people like you should have left huge parts of the world alone instead of colonising under the pretence of ‘giving them a better life’.

honestly read a book or two and you’ll understand this post is wild and has racist connotations based on your bias of west being best.

Yes, it is moral to leave them alone. They want that.
They can be offered things, but they live independently far away from people - isolated.
As pp said, forcing people to participate in what someone thinks is "the right way to live" has already been done and well... Didn’t end well, did it.

Why do you think their way of life is wrong and needa to be corrected?

Considering what's happened so far every time tribes have been 'contacted' I think it's best to leave them alone.

Interesting arguments. I’ve always been strongly of the opinion to leave them alone. Not comfortable with the cameras and reporting, though I am fascinated. But you make a good point about eg women being denied medical care in childbirth that they may individually want but not have agency to access if the tribe as a whole are against it. So I don’t know.

Out of interest, where are you writing from?

This is a deeply patronising view of indigenous peoples. Please please please use this curiosity as an opportunity to explore some of the histories of what’s happened to indigenous people from when the Americas were settled by Europeans. Hint : it wasn’t pretty, and systematic governmental abuse against indigenous people remain rife today across the world - see eg. Relative health and social outcomes for Aborigines in Australia. Assimilating people against their will does not make them happier or healthier.

If we haven’t learned yet that interfering with other cultures and imposing our ideas of how they ‘should’ live leads to utter disaster , there is absolutely no hope for any of us. Filming them is disgisting. Very few indigenous peoples want to be ‘civilised’. It’s all very well to talk about offering medical help etc, but very soon contact with the outside world leads to more diseases for them, a breakdown in their culture and own ways of healing.

I just watched the Lost Children on Netflix. It’s obvious how contact with ‘civilisation’ has led to fear, abuse and alcoholism in their community.

It feels very intrusive to be setting up cameras to film them when they can’t consent and don’t know what cameras are or what the implications will be. It feels abusive.

The benefits of modern.healthcare etc would probably be outweighed by the disadvantages of bringing 'modern' ways to them

Their children will be fine and your pearl clutching is ridiculous.

Please read up on the effects of colonisation globally. Your point of view is so white-centric it’s painful. Leave them alone.

Would you be happy with children not being offered healthcare though or an opportunity for education? Where are the police? How is justice administered?

I think there is a moral argument to not intervene but support. Yes there were atrocities committed in previous centuries but that is not an argument for monitoring people's health and allowing access to such basic things as anti biotics , immunisarion etc. Why should anyone be denied these things as civilians of a country?

I feel that a nurse and small medical station should be made available for people of the area should they choose to access it, but I also feel that westernised mainstream society is designed to disrupt and breakdown families and communities, and industrial food chains are designed to destroy our health, so until something changes I would leave them alone

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/mar/30/child-and-domestic-abuse-in-indigenous-communities-chronically-undisclosed

Is it pearl clutching to actually have concern or does the right to live independently to the rest of society mean that human rights are discarded?

I think everyone has the right to refuse medical treatment but it is a moral duty to offer it. You could actually view this as diplomacy and the two cultures could learn and benefit from each other.

Question. If a murder happens in a tribe who should investigate and prosecute it?

It’s about consent.

if people have been in contacted this long, it’s because they’ve chosen to be. Delivering all the “help” you mention doesn’t come without strings attached.

again, abuse of Indigenous people is not something that has happened just centuries ago it’s very very real today.

a good place to start as to why giving “education” and “health” to indigenous people against their will is by reading some of the findings of the truth and reconciliation commission in Canada. the TRC in Canada specifically focuses on residential schools but it gives you all of the surrounding context of the racist assumptions that indigenous people somehow needed saving from themselves by white people.

www.rcaanc-cirnac.gc.ca/eng/1450124405592/1529106060525

The tribe will have their own way of dealing with it.

you’re assuming that the only way to understand and administer “justice” is through the western lens of trial and incarceration by the state.

Is there not a risk that if we were to make contact we could inadvertently wipe them all out with unfamiliar (to them) viruses etc?

Bringing in ilnesses they have absolutely no defences to is also an issue.

It would never end in just a nurse station. It would gradually get more and more stupid with push to modern standards of living, food etc, which are killing many (while also medically saving many yes, but also medically having to save many who are having issue due to modern standards of living...)
Look at pacif islands for how our "bestest living" changes impacted them.

People are trying to move away from many aspects of modern lives now. I fucking dream of off grid homestead. No need to push some who survived for that long happily by themselves into this shitshow.

The children will be educated. They will learn how to live successfully in a forest. My kids would last a couple of days.
The modern world is hardly brilliant. We are slowly killing many of our children through pollution, poor diet and lack of exercise.
I do agree it would be good if they could be offered healthcare but given the state of Brazil's healthcare system and the poverty of the many of its citizens I'm not convinced they are missing much.