First ever photograph of uncontacted Massaco people in Brazil

Automatic cameras installed in the Brazilian rainforest have captured for the first time an isolated indigenous community thriving despite pressure from farmers and illegal deforestation attempts in the Amazon.

The community is called Massaco after the river that runs through their lands. However, it is not known exactly how they refer to themselves. According to a piece published by The Guardian on Sunday, the indigenous community has never been contacted before.

Similarly, their language, social structures and belief systems also remain a mystery.

Brazil’s National Foundation for Indigenous Peoples (FUNAI), believes the Massaco population has at least doubled since the early 1990s, despite pressure from agribusiness, foresters, miners and drug traffickers. They are now thought to be a community of 200 to 250 people.

Care in the community

FUNAI has placed these automatic cameras at a point where metal tools are periodically left as gifts for the locals. This practice is used to prevent uncontacted people from entering farms or forestry camps to take tools.

Previous indirect observations and satellite images in the area had shown that the Massaco hunted with three-meter-long bows and moved their villages around from season to season within the forest.

The Massaco have also attempted to protect their village and deter visitors from outsiders by planting thousands of foot and tyre-piercing spikes in the ground.

“Now, with the detailed photographs, it’s possible to see the resemblance to the Sirionó people, who live on the opposite bank of the Guaporé River, in Bolivia,” Altair Algayer, a government agent with FUNAI who has spent more than three decades protecting the Massaco’s territory, was quoted in The Guardian.

“But still, we can’t say who they are. There’s a lot that’s still a mystery.”

This bucking of a global trend of cultural loss and disappearing languages has been accomplished by the innovative public policy of not initiating contact – which was pioneered by Brazil in 1987 after decades of government-led contact killed more than 90% of those contacted, mostly from disease. The Guardian article notes that since then, Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, and Bolivia have also adopted versions of the approach.

According to a draft report by the International Working Group on Isolation and First Contact with Indigenous Peoples, there are 61 confirmed groups living in the Amazon and the Gran Chaco region, and there are thought to be 128 communities that have not yet been verified by the authorities.