Amazing program "First Contact: Lost Tribe of the Amazon” screened on Channel 4 on Tuesday 23 Feb 2016. However program totally out of its depth, not really grasping what was going on, nor it appears do the anthropologists and definitely not the kids from the tribes.
Nakedness
"At that moment their eyes were opened, and they suddenly felt shame at their nakedness." [Genesis 3:7]
"Nakedness" is a concept that comes from clothes. You need see the body *hidden* by clothes to develop the idea. Amazing they use a word that translates as "shame", Genesis usually translates with "realised"... to look upon one's state from a **superior** place creates realisation, shame and humility. The hidden is superior to the power of the eye, but the eye free to access the body sees inferior. So being hidden by clothes implies conceptually superiority!! Links directly in with porn, celebrity media world too (photos are clothes): an image *hides* the person... a photographed person makes the viewer naked and inferior... but the paparazzi seek to overcome this by humiliating photos (fails/nakedness)... a photographed naked person is both superior and hidden (a porn *star*) but also inferior as no longer hidden... the image of the hidden unhidden... such subtle ideas. Note too shame is no longer used in this confused world of unrealisation.. the media age is the age of clothed/hidden. They come out of hiding (by the forest - that we have destroyed - program missed this completely) so we can realise (and be shameful?) of what we are and they can forget (hide/clothe) what they are!
Synopsis
Regarding the rest of the program it concludes that fear has kept the tribes hidden, and as that fear is waning they are coming forard to contact the world beyond the jungle.
The question is why they would leave the jungle, just as we might ask why would we leave the city to meet them? Isn’t it because the jungle has all been cut down? The entire people that inhabited the whole of the South American forests are now squeezed into an area the size of Wales. The tribe in the program actually started their life in Peru escaping slaughter by logger through the reservation to Brazil. They went through their entire territory to escape! That is how small their trritory now is. It is a hidden version of North America where the natives were driven off the land into reservations.
The program estimates that 90% of the native of the South American forest were massacred by settlers. Rubber plantations used them for slaves and the program suggested that many of the remaining natives escaped from the plantations and hid in the forest. Slaughter continues in Peru by illegal loggers but Brazil seems to have a more legal safer environment that the natives are now being forced to recognise and run to.
Criticism
The program appeared to completely fail to realise that this is the end of the “civilisation”. An entire people and way of life has been destroyed, and we are seeing a few scattered people now living in fear, completely surrounded by hostile “white people” who pen them into a tiny forest. They feel surrounded and overwhelmed. To add to their woes it appears that the forest is now over hunted and they need go for days before finding food. Small groups, under nourished, and afraid now becoming victim to the jungles own terrors like the snakes and jaguars. It is the youth who have only ever known this failing way of life who have given up and sort surrender to the encircled armies.
The anthropologist, Carlos Meirelles, was philosophical arguing that this was evolution and the fitter civilisations were “out competing” the forest tribes. Certainly this is true: on average it is always true that the winner is the stronger in a fight. But do we need to fight and compete? The issue for me lies in our relationship with the forest. Certainly the tribes people can’t live their way of life if we cut down all the forest. Their way of life is at an end since we are determined to cut down all the forest. But their way of life does not exploit and endanger the forest, nor the cities. Ours however exploits and endangers everything. The battle is with a system of civilisation that exploits for profit: what I broadly call Capitalism. The program wholey failed to target the actual reason why the indians are making contact in the 21st Century, wholey failed to identify why they are afraid of “white people”, wholey failed to pin point the causes of the crisis in their communities. If this was a court case not only did the defendant not show up, he wasn’t even on trial and the single expert witness Carlos Meirelles was on oath answering questions about a different case.
Never-the-less fascinating “meeting” people who have survived our wholesale destruction of South America and discovering that they are just like us: easily dazzled and wowed by Vegas lights and the material comforts of post-industrial life. I wonder what they will think though when they realise that our seeking these material comforts is the reason they were massacred and their forest and way of life was destroyed in the first place!
