Two Scientists Say We Should Contact “Untouched” Tribes of the Amazon, Instead of Banishing Them

Two American anthropologists, Kim Hill and Robert Walker,  proposed that the policy of not contacting the isolated tribes and indigenous people should change and it is about time for us to start communicating with them, The Independent reported.

Hill and Walker also noted that it should be encouraged to contact those isolated tribes instead of being prohibited. It is estimated that there are more than 100 such tribes around the world, with a majority being located on the "New Continent" (North and South America) These indigenous people have never been contacted by the people of the modern world and they have no clue about our existence, except for the direct and indirect effects of our policies of deforestation and pollution on their livelihood.

The decision of keeping those societies "uncontacted" is probably derived from the disastrous previous experiences between the native tribes of those lands and outsiders; namely European colonists, the Independent reported.

European colonists did not only bring "modernity" to those lands but also diseases that wiped out a big portions of the population. The suffering of the natives did not end there however, colonists also introduced slavery and induced starvation among the native tribes, which brought them near extinction.

After all these experiences, the policy of "leave them alone" was adopted for the sake of "preserving" and saving those societies. But Hill and Walker say that if we don't introduce ourselves to those communities with a safe practice that would guarantee their survival, some other people who do not prioritize the protection of indigenous people and their tribes will do it in a brutal and devastating way, the Independent said.

Hill, who works as an anthropologist at Arizona State University, said: "Protection is an illusion. Loggers, miners, narco-traffickers, hunters and explorers enter all these areas at will, and accidental contacts are inevitable and disastrous," the Independent reported.