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

251 replies

mids2019 · 22/12/2024 05:39

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.....

Exclusive: photographs reveal first glimpse of uncontacted Amazon community

Automatic cameras in the Brazilian rainforest show images of the Massaco people, who are flourishing despite environmental threats

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

OP posts:
Thread gallery
7
Kendodd · 22/12/2024 20:14

They know we exist, if they want contact they'll come out of the forest and meet us.

TheWildZebra · 23/12/2024 08:28

mids2019 · 22/12/2024 16:46

I just can't see how supplying advanced healthcare is a cultural imposition. Surely at it's most basic it's altruism removing unnecessary pain and suffering

Have you actually read any of the resources that people have shared with you about the impacts of these kinds of interventions on indigenous people? We’ve all been very polite to you, but please just use your (clearly present) capacity for critical thought and apply it to reading some of the many things out there that explain why the things you suggest are so incredibly dangerous to indigenous people. Or you know, use ChatGPT if you can’t muster the energy to read a whole article.

youre really not making the clever intellectual argument you think you are - they’re misinformed, racist and completely Eurocentric in their world view. From your other threads OP it seems you have a bit of a fascination with interventionist politics by the West in places where interventions are not actually wanted.

On the offchance you do actually have an attention span longer than 30 seconds to consider other peoples arguments, here is an article that explains how colonialism is embedded in medical care , and how (once indigenous people are given medical care) the outcomes for them are still significantly worse than for non-indigenous demographics. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9188792/

The past, present and future of race and colonialism in medicine - PMC

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9188792

EmmaMaria · 23/12/2024 11:12

soupfiend · 22/12/2024 17:33

Out of interest are you under the impression that indigenous peoples dont use alcohol and drugs? They might not come in pill or bottle form but people over thousands of years have developed substances to get high/sedated on, its what humans do!

I neither assume that they do, nor that they don't. But that is their business. I was respinding to a particulat arguement that they'd be better off with GP's and an A&E department, the enlightment, industrialisation etc..

Interested in this thread?

Then you might like threads about this subject:

applecake78 · 23/12/2024 14:07

They should be forced to eat junk fund so they can enjoy the benefits of slimming drugs.

AmazingGraze · 23/12/2024 14:43

applecake78 · 23/12/2024 14:07

They should be forced to eat junk fund so they can enjoy the benefits of slimming drugs.

😂😂

EsmaCannonball · 23/12/2024 15:52

It's an incredibly complex and interesting moral argument and one that I don't have the answer to: are these tribes being preserved for our benefit or for theirs? Are people being consigned to live a stone age existence so Westerners can congratulate themselves on being anti-Colonial? Would these people truly choose to live this way if they were presented with other viable options? If this way of life is better, or at least an equal alternative to life in liberal Western democracies, then why isn't it what Westerners are choosing for themselves or their children?

Somebody upthread said that people in these tribes look healthier than modern Western people but I've just looked into it and their life expectancy is very poor, mainly due to high infant mortality rates. Another moral question: is it right to let children die from easily curable conditions because intervention would end a way of life?

biscuitsandbooks · 23/12/2024 15:58

EsmaCannonball · 23/12/2024 15:52

It's an incredibly complex and interesting moral argument and one that I don't have the answer to: are these tribes being preserved for our benefit or for theirs? Are people being consigned to live a stone age existence so Westerners can congratulate themselves on being anti-Colonial? Would these people truly choose to live this way if they were presented with other viable options? If this way of life is better, or at least an equal alternative to life in liberal Western democracies, then why isn't it what Westerners are choosing for themselves or their children?

Somebody upthread said that people in these tribes look healthier than modern Western people but I've just looked into it and their life expectancy is very poor, mainly due to high infant mortality rates. Another moral question: is it right to let children die from easily curable conditions because intervention would end a way of life?

The problem is that intervention will likely kill them. It's easy to say "it's unkind to let people live that way without showing them an alternative" but unfortunately, showing them the alternative could easily wipe them out - completely.

They have no defence against run of the mill illnesses like norovirus, or the common cold. To take them away from what they know could very, very easily be fatal - even if it's ultimately done with good intentions.

In the 1800's, a British explorer ended up on North Sentinel island and took a few inhabitants back to the mainland - two elderly adults and four children. The adults died within days because they couldn't fight off our diseases, and the children were then dumped back on the island with all our germs etc. still on them. It's theorised that that's why they're now incredibly hostile towards anyone who tries to go anywhere near them - to the point that they will kill without hesitation.

If they could be shown our "way" of living without any risks to their health and wellbeing, that would be different, of course.

EmmaMaria · 23/12/2024 16:16

Here is what happens to people that we have given the benfits of modern civilisation to:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_of_the_Hole
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/19/world/americas/brazil-amazon-tribe-piripkura.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/25/world/americas/brazil-amazon-indigenous-tribe.html
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/09/epidemic-fears-as-80-of-indigenous-amazon-tribe-fall-ill

We really need to stop "helping them" and let them make their own choices. The sad fact is that they will probably be wiped out by our diseases and our rapacious grabs for land soon anyway.

Man of the Hole - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_of_the_Hole

AmazingGraze · 23/12/2024 16:22

EsmaCannonball · 23/12/2024 15:52

It's an incredibly complex and interesting moral argument and one that I don't have the answer to: are these tribes being preserved for our benefit or for theirs? Are people being consigned to live a stone age existence so Westerners can congratulate themselves on being anti-Colonial? Would these people truly choose to live this way if they were presented with other viable options? If this way of life is better, or at least an equal alternative to life in liberal Western democracies, then why isn't it what Westerners are choosing for themselves or their children?

Somebody upthread said that people in these tribes look healthier than modern Western people but I've just looked into it and their life expectancy is very poor, mainly due to high infant mortality rates. Another moral question: is it right to let children die from easily curable conditions because intervention would end a way of life?

I can’t think that living in a slum, probably addicted to drugs and living in fear of military regimes/ corrupt govt is a preferable existence. That’s the life of many of the poverty stricken population who enjoy the benefits of Western ‘civilisation’.

biscuitsandbooks · 23/12/2024 16:27

AmazingGraze · 23/12/2024 16:22

I can’t think that living in a slum, probably addicted to drugs and living in fear of military regimes/ corrupt govt is a preferable existence. That’s the life of many of the poverty stricken population who enjoy the benefits of Western ‘civilisation’.

Yep - I think this is too easily glossed over. It's not like these people will live a lovely, privileged existence in a modern city somewhere with access to jobs, healthcare and education - they'll be the lowest of the low, poor, with no basic skills to enable them to even feed themselves, let alone thrive.

Fireishot · 23/12/2024 16:30

mids2019 · 22/12/2024 06:19

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?

Where are the police?? Hilarious

AmazingGraze · 24/12/2024 06:45

biscuitsandbooks · 23/12/2024 16:27

Yep - I think this is too easily glossed over. It's not like these people will live a lovely, privileged existence in a modern city somewhere with access to jobs, healthcare and education - they'll be the lowest of the low, poor, with no basic skills to enable them to even feed themselves, let alone thrive.

Exactly

Kendodd · 24/12/2024 10:32

I'm sure these isolated communities have violence, child abuse and all the rest. Somebody upthread described them as healthy, they probably are, but only because the sick or disabled don't survive, these communities can't afford to carry people.

I'm fascinated by these communities and would really love to see documentary film makes record their lives. Or better still go in and see for myself or bring them out to see what they make of our world. This would be 100% wrong though, even if it didn't kill them which it probably would.

I think the Indian government have the right stance- don't touch, don't look, with regard the North Sentanel (sp?) Islands and is very protective of them. I believe some American tried to visit and they killed him. The family kicked up a fuss but India's attitude was he shouldn't have gone anyway and no way are we going to try to recover his body and the idea of arresting people for his murder is laughable. I believe they did arrest the boat owner who took him there for breaching the NS no go zone.
Good for India!
I think they sent planes over to check on the islanders after the 2005 tsunami. Although I don't know what they would have done had they thought they needed help.

EmmaMaria · 24/12/2024 11:45

I'm sure these isolated communities have violence, child abuse and all the rest.

You're sure about that. On what basis?

Deathraystare · 24/12/2024 12:03

But we aren't leaving them alone. We keep removing vast areas of land giving them less land to farm etc.

Thevelvelletes · 24/12/2024 13:08

I think its immoral to not leave them alone.

Kendodd · 24/12/2024 13:16

EmmaMaria · 24/12/2024 11:45

I'm sure these isolated communities have violence, child abuse and all the rest.

You're sure about that. On what basis?

Really, you think they don't?!?!
Indigenous people always have a higher murder rate than non Indigenous. Also looking at our own past, people were much more violent in early human societies. Things like infanticide were thought to be common. As I said, they couldn't afford to carry any passengers. I don't know if you've read Sapiens, but this book gives a really interesting insight into our own past and the lives of Indigenous people around the world.

soupfiend · 24/12/2024 13:18

Kendodd · 24/12/2024 13:16

Really, you think they don't?!?!
Indigenous people always have a higher murder rate than non Indigenous. Also looking at our own past, people were much more violent in early human societies. Things like infanticide were thought to be common. As I said, they couldn't afford to carry any passengers. I don't know if you've read Sapiens, but this book gives a really interesting insight into our own past and the lives of Indigenous people around the world.

I wonder why people are really struggling with this?

fanaticalfairy · 24/12/2024 13:41

EmmaMaria · 24/12/2024 11:45

I'm sure these isolated communities have violence, child abuse and all the rest.

You're sure about that. On what basis?

In the basis that they're human beings.

EmmaMaria · 24/12/2024 16:43

Kendodd · 24/12/2024 13:16

Really, you think they don't?!?!
Indigenous people always have a higher murder rate than non Indigenous. Also looking at our own past, people were much more violent in early human societies. Things like infanticide were thought to be common. As I said, they couldn't afford to carry any passengers. I don't know if you've read Sapiens, but this book gives a really interesting insight into our own past and the lives of Indigenous people around the world.

Yes, I have read Sapiens. I have read a lot of other things as well, including the critiques of Sapiens and more recent works that blow huge holes in some of his assumptions. A lot moves on in 10+years.

So please do elaborate - what is the murder rate amongst non-contacted indigenous people? Because any contacted indigneous people are tainted by their very contact, and the place that puts them in our "modern" world.

"Also looking at our own past, people were much more violent in early human societies" - you are assuming that people who have had no contact with the modern world are violent because (allegedly) we were more violent in the past. Of course, without patriarchal hierarchies and nation states, they may be less violent that we have ever been. You cannot compare what we have been (or currently are) with them because you don't know what they are like.

"Things like infanticide were thought to be common" - who thought these things? What was their evidence?

You are falling into the trap of having read a couple of Eurocentric books full of suppositions, which are almost impossible to evidence - forensic archaelogy is a fascinating study which changes opinions more often than I change clothes - and whose observations are inextricably overlaid by modern society. Even if they are right about all that, there is no reason to assume they are right to apply those things to an uncontacted Amazonian tribe in 2024.

It is arrogant to assume that abuse and violence are common amongst people that we know absolutely nothing about; and in fact many tribes in the Americas had sophisticated social structures, complex systems of social justice that dealt with violence (often in ways better than Europe ever has), matriarchal sytems of organisation and many other benefits. Native Americans were not the savages settlers and Europeans would like to portray them. The fact that we might have been pretty savage in our past - in some ways still are - does not mean that is the natural way in which human society must develop and evolve.

EmmaMaria · 24/12/2024 16:51

I thought the next paragraph equally compelling:
"Those desperate to steal their territories frequently attempt to use uncontacted tribes’ “absence” from national and international fora and “consultation” processes to argue their case. They present a wide array of excuses, from the denial of uncontacted tribes’ existence to claims that they could benefit from “western” hospitals and schools, claims that they stand no chance of surviving in their forests and that they are destined to “disappear”, and, in the case of extremist missionaries, a fierce determination to bring the “word of God”. Any forced contact by outsiders with uncontacted tribes, for whatever stated justification, puts their survival at risk and violates their right to live as they choose. "
Not all missionaries are worried about the word of God - they condemn them as child abusers and violent people without evidence and want to bring them the benefits of police and social workers.

boys3 · 24/12/2024 16:56

@EmmaMaria yep 💯, and well worth copying and pasting into the thread. Thank you.😀