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.....

Excellent post. Our way of life, is having such a positive effect on us all, isn't it?

Exactly. The social problems in indigenous communities in Australia are due largely to coloniser interference. Not its absence.

Interesting moral arguments. While I’m all for leave them alone, there is a question that if the tribe engages in immoral behaviour or harmful practices, human rights abuses - eg female genital mutation or sexual abuse of children (child marriage), torture or killings, etc - is there an obligation of the State to intervene to assist those children or women?

The rights of indigenous people are extremely important and threatened. However it’s an interesting thought exercise to ask what obligations any humans, anywhere, have to respect individual human rights - eg girls right to an education? What if children in the tribe would like to choose to be educated (if not currently accessible to them) Is there any obligation on other humans to check on this? Or do other humans just look away. It’s a highly complex and sensitive debate for the people concerned but that’s not to say it’s not worth having.

The taliban, so a group of people who want to change the way other people live their lives forever, no matter how many die and no matter how much culture is destroyed. Sounds like what the OP is advocating.

I think you’re giving the OP far more integrity in the question they’re asking than is actually there. Their questions are embedded in racist and Darwinist moral arguments that frankly have no place in the 21 century.

Immoral according to who, though?

Who are we to decide that our way of life is best? That's what makes me hugely uncomfortable.

@Princessconsuelabananahammock9
@RosaStar
@InCheesusITrust

Interesting discussion.
If a group of people decided that they wanted to live remotely and my their own rules would that also be ok?
Like cults?

Is it because these people have always lived here that makes you think it's ok?

What if we stumbled across a group of inbred people following some cult like leader in some commune where the leader could rape children and they had lived there for 20years? 100 years? Always?

Why is it any different?

Yes, if they want to be left alone.

Well - the Universal Declaration of Human Rights applies to all humans.

Or - is it only for humans whose societal leaders agreed to it?

Are humans who live in tribes not allowed to access these rights?

Genuinely don’t know - fortunately it’s not for me to decide either but it’s an interesting question I’ve never thought about before.

They're not being denied access to those rights though, they're just choosing to continue to live in the way they've always lived.

I suppose the difficulty comes when they don't know about those rights, so you could argue that their choice to remain as they are isn't a true choice - but equally their lives are so different to ours that they may not even understand what they're agreeing to (or what they're opting out of).

I agree it's not easy - I'm just very uncomfortable with the belief that our way is best and that they're somehow missing out by not being a part of our society. The comments about justice systems etc. make me particularly uncomfortable.

I believe in the Prime directive.

Leave them alone.

I don't want to sound bad but you have described something VERY similar to (if not quite exact) places we know and exist and still are not doing anything about it... We even do business with their governments...

Somehow though people think it should be addressed in small ingenious tribes in the middle of Amazon...

Reading the article, the purpose of the cameras is to prove the existence of the tribes because land grabbers are only able to steal the land if they disprove the existence of a community so this acts as protection.

This specific tribe have placed thousands of spikes in the ground to stop people visiting and interfering so they appear to have made their wishes with regard interventions pretty clear.

We may not agree with their medical, moral, child rearing etc policies but we don't have to. I don't agree with religion as a whole and wish that the entire world would stop it because I see it as a hugely destructive force used to control the masses, it is used as justification for abuse, wars, discrimination and so much more. That doesn't mean that should get to impose my will on anyone. There are thousands and thousands of different cultures out there and many of them live in ways I personally can't agree with but they have the right to do that.

This community have chosen to remain segregated, they could quite easily have packed up some belongings and walked out to 'civilisation' or just taken down the spikes and invited people in.

They do have rudimentary interactions with 'civilisation' because gifts of tools are left for them and they take them. So they know what's out there.

Funny how despite your concerns , not only are they not extinct (like the vast majority of tribes who have been "civilised") , but they are thriving and expanding. What does THAT tell you?

For goodness sake, leave them alone. Why anyone would want to fuck their lives up by dragging them into the shitshow of so-called 'civilisation' in the 21st century is beyond me.

Let's go back in time to other examples of perfectly happy tribes being pushed into a world that is foreign to them. It's not 'better' for them. Let's say for example aliens came to earth, look at you kids and say "hey we have better health care for your children but to access this they muat adapt to our culture and way of life". Your children will become distressed, unhappy, and feel they they have been removed from all that they know. The results, as history tells us, have been devastating.

100%

I come from a 'colonised' country and this sort of behaviour completely ruined perfectly normal lives. I see the impact still today. OP I'm going to guess that you are from Britian....

There may be all sorts of things this tribe do that isn't appropriate in 'civilised' society, and there may be all sort of things that they are 'missing out' on - but they live god knows where, deep in the middle of the 6.7 million square kilometres of Amazon forest.

They are not just suddenly going to be able to access fantastic healthcare unless they completely give up their way of life and move thousands of miles away to a town (where it still may not be available to any kind of Western standards, and if it is may have to be paid for). By coming to town and mixing with other people they are going to be exposed to all sorts of diseases that they have no immunity too and which could then wipe out their whole tribe if they were to take them back. They live an isolated life that means they aren't at risk in the first place from many of the diseases that spread elsewhere due to populations mixing freely.

There may be child marriage or sexual abuse - but for the high and mighty among you we haven't even managed to stamp out child sexual abuse in our own 'modern' country, and the estimated global number of child brides falls around 650 million. These things 'possibly happening' are not a reason to destroy the lives of an indigenous tribe.

Are you deliberately trying to be provocative, OP? I find it hard to believe that anyone can be this uninformed, coupled with such a massive white savior complex.

For a start, isolated tribes have zero resistance against the diseases strangers carry with them, which is reason enough to leave them alone.

To address some of your other points:

Whilst I can understand the distaste for having a camera filming people, it's nothing like a zoo. According to the article, the cameras are only in the specific place where the National Indigenous Peoples Foundation leave metal tools, to discourage people from the tribe from venturing onto farmland and being killed. I can also understand why the Foundation want the cameras, as it's proof to the loggers/ranchers/Government that there is a thriving community living in the forest. (The indigenous tribe are obviously aware of others, and could avoid this spot, if they chose.)

Yes, obviously you can have two levels of law in a state. Perhaps do some research on tribal law to develop your view.

Excluding the fact that some countries already have tribal laws, federal tribal laws and state laws co-existing, socities like the UK approach crime and punishment differently depending on one's background, sex, class and fortune. Nowhere has the sort of single, blanket equitable legal sytem that you seem to believe exists; and we certainly are not all equal under law.

You seem to think tribes are lawless children that need protecting from their ignorant, dangerous ways. If they have a law against killing without reason, then they will also have a punishment.

I don't even know where you're going with your bizarre comment about burning witches at the stake. All of humanity has, at one time or another, done appalling things to one another, and we continue to do so. This isn't limited to isolated tribes.

Your continued suggestion that we should intervene because the tribe has a right to vaccinations etc., suggests you think our ways are somehow superior. The tribe wouldn't need a vaccination against measles if we left them alone. I am sure they also have their own medicines and healers. They are also clearly aware of the existance of farmers, so they could interact, if they wished to.

There is enough Western interference. Leave them alone to do whatever it is they do.
Just because you think they need something from us, doesn’t mean they do.

The peoplemaking it said so, but some countries did not sign and most, if not all, countries that did are regularly breaking some parts. Including UK.

And who says the tribes are even breaking the basic human rights?
Right to fair trial? They may well have it. The fact it's not exactly like our court doesn't make it automat unfair does it?
Education. The right did not specify it must be our style of education.

Which human rights they do not have?

If we would really dig in, forcing contact when it's clear they don't want it and bashing that they might be abusers, actually breaks article 12.🤷

By your standards? Yet again it is arrogance to judge another people by your standards. Many indigenous tribes are matriachal, or have strong rights for women. Brazilian indigenous women from tribes in contact (and often not by their choice) are at the forefront of environmental and social justice campaigns. They don't need you are anyone else to tell them what rights they ought to have or are missing out on. When people stop burning their forest and slaughtering them and their kin to create farming land to feed you, to obtain gold for your jewellery, and logging of high value wood for your furniture and knick-knacks then you will have a right to ask about their values.

I can't imagine why anyone would want these people to have Brazil's human rights:
https://www.amnesty.org/en/location/americas/south-america/brazil/report-brazil/