Readers of Condé Nast Traveller and Red Bulletin Magazine may soon notice a striking advert after the publishers generously donated space to Survival:

Defying Logic

Two and a half years after the Bushmen’s victory over the government in Botswana’s High Court, ministers still refuse to allow the Bushmen to use their water borehole, which was a vital source of water for many Bushmen in the dry season, nor have they handed out any hunting permits – without these, it is illegal for the Bushmen to hunt.

As if forcing the Bushmen to walk hundreds of kilometres for water was not bad enough, the government has at the same time approved plans by safari companies to drill their own boreholes to create wildlife ‘waterholes’.

So any tourists visiting the Central Kalahari Game Reserve face the very real prospect of watching antelope and eland coming down to the waterhole to drink at sunset, whilst in the shadows hungry and thirsty Bushmen look on. And that will surely put most sensible people off their gin and tonics.

Not since 1742 has there been an Amazon Indian uprising on this scale resulting in so many deaths.

But the recent violent protests have left dozens dead and Alberto Pizango (pictured), the leader of Peru’s Amazon Indians, taking refuge in the Nicaraguan embassy in Peru.

For months, the protests had peacefully marked desperation at the government’s recent laws promoting the continued opening of indigenous land to oil companies and other groups hoping to exploit the rainforest’s many resources.

Of course not every supporter of the cause joined the demonstrations; Peru’s uncontacted tribes, who face the greatest threat from the government’s contested policies, remain far from the turmoil.

But they also make clear their desire to defend their lands, famously aiming arrows at passing planes.

Nevertheless, the movement has found support from across Peruvian society and beyond, as solidarity rallies gathered worldwide.

At this crucial moment many observers, including British newspaper The Guardian, stand with Pizango, noting that:

Peru’s president, Alan Garcia, is determined to parcel up the forest into blocks for commercial use, encouraged by a free trade deal with America signed three years ago.

More than 70% of the forest has been allocated for oil exploration and the consequences for the Amazonian ecosystem, and the people who co-exist with it, have been dire.

The protests turned bloody last Friday when clashes with the army and police, as they tried to clear a roadblock, left at least 30 people dead and perhaps many more.

The Indian spokesman, Alberto Pizango, who heads a human rights organisation that brings together Amazonian Indian interests from across the country and which has long fought peacefully to protect the forests, has been charged with sedition.

Survival’s Director, Stephen Corry, has said that the Amazon is facing its ‘Tiananmen’ unless its government changes course. There are glimmers of hope, with the BBC reporting that two highly controversial land laws have been suspended.

Now’s a good time to write a letter to President Garcia to join the growing global opposition to his government’s tactics.

One of the many traditional forms of agriculture practised by the Batak involves the ritualistic planting of rice.

As expert custodians of their lands, they have kept the forests of northern Palawan in the western Philippines in good order for thousands of years.

Today, this self-sufficient cultivation is imperilled by misguided forest conservation schemes, made worse by outsiders taking disease in and natural resources out.

A Batak man carries out a rice planting ritual. © Dario Novellino

Remember this?

This was the photo that sent the media dizzy last year and appeared on TV screens and in newspapers and magazines all around the world.

They are members of one of the world’s last uncontacted tribes, living deep in the remote Brazilian Amazon.

According to Google, news of these photos went to 190 countries. That’s to say, every country in the world bar two.

Does that make this the most famous tribe in the world? Could be.

Previously uncontacted members of the Paraguayan Ayoreo-Totobiegosode group the moment they were first contacted, in 2004. © GAT/Survival

To mark the ‘anniversary’ of the publication of this photo, released last year by Survival on May 29, we have written a report called ‘One Year On: Uncontacted tribes face extinction.’

The thrust of the report is simple. Despite all the media coverage last year and the wave of public outrage sparked by it, uncontacted tribes around the world still do not have their rights recognised.

Their lands are still being invaded. And the tribes themselves are still at risk of being wiped out by violence and by diseases against which they have no immunity.

You can read the report here.

And you can get involved – by writing to people in positions of power.

Tribal people do not just die out. They’re killed – and the people killing them have names and addresses.

In times when publishing a news story online can reach millions of people and online video is challenging broadcast TV, it can be easy to overlook the power of the humble poster.

Survival’s HQ on busy Goswell Road in central London is a great place to get our message across, and dramatic, large-format posters in the shop window are just the ticket.

Our Stamp It Out campaign targets
racist descriptions of tribal peoples
in the media.

“In 1500 there were 10 million tribal people living in Brazil.Today only 460,000 are left.” Disease from outsiders has decimated Brazil’s indigenous population.

“Next drink - 106 hours.” The Bushmen continue to be persecuted by the Botswana government. Despite having lived in the Kalahari for thousands of years, they aren’t allowed even one waterhole.

Somewhat fittingly for a member of one of the least contacted tribes in the world, Google respected the privacy of our Stamp It Out campaign’s Jarawa model by blurring out her face in Google Street View:

Kamará is an Awá Indian, from the Amazon state of Maranhão, Brazil. He and his family were contacted in 1998 by FUNAI, the government’s Indian affairs department. They were brought to live in Juriti, a community of about 40 of the most recently contacted Awá. It is very close to a road built by loggers.

In Oct 2006 Kamará, who is now about 50 years old, narrowly survived an attempt to kill him. He recounted the incident to Felipe Milanez who was then editor of FUNAI’s magazine ‘Brasil Indígena’. Felipe is currently assistant editor of ‘National Geographic Brasil’.

The loggers’ road cuts through the forest. © Uirá Garcia

The attempt to kill Kamará was a real assassination attempt; brutal. Read the rest of this entry »

UK firm Vedanta Resources is pushing ahead with the construction of a bauxite mine on the tribe’s land as I write this. We are asking all our supporters to help keep this issue in public focus, to put pressure on Vedanta and to defend the Dongria now.

Watch the film, send it to your friends and contacts, and help us make as much noise about this as possible.

Write a letter bringing attention to the Dongria’s plight.

Allegations that workers from Malaysian logging companies are raping and harassing Penan women caused a furore in the Malaysian press after they were publicised in September.

Top government figures denied the claims, while numerous Malaysian and international organisations called for an official investigation and better protection for the Penan.

The two logging companies – Samling and Interhill – whose workers the Penan accused are operating on the tribe’s land without their consent.

A logger’s truck shifts its plunder. © Andy Rain/Nick Rain/Survival

Penan communities have spent more than 20 years trying to keep loggers off their land and to prevent the destruction of the forests they rely on for food and shelter.
Read the rest of this entry »

We’re excited to launch our new film ‘Mine: story of a sacred mountain’ today. It’s got some big names attached to it: Joanna Lumley narrates, and there’s music by, amongst others, Skin (formerly of Skunk Anansie) and Robot Club.

But the real stars are, of course, the Dongria Kondh. They are one of India’s most remote and self-sufficient tribes. Their forests, in the Niyamgiri Hills, are spectacular. And they worship Niyam Raja, the God of their sacred mountain.

But if mining giant Vedanta Resources gets its way, they will be sacrificed at the altar of the Gods of ‘progress’. Among Niyamgiri’s riches is bauxite, the raw material for aluminium. Ironically, the very rocks beneath their forests and villages, the lands which have sustained them since the beginning, may be their destruction.

What will the Dongria Kondh do to defend their forests, their way of life and their mountain God? Watch the film. Let the Dongria take you into their lives and their lands. And, please, help them save their mountain.

Extraordinary: Forbes has named Anil Agarwal one of its 2009 ‘Heroes of Philanthropy’.

This, of course, is the same Anil Agarwal who’s head of Vedanta Resources. Vedanta plans to mine India’s Niyamgiri hills, and thereby destroy the remote Dongria Kondh tribe who live on Niyamgiri’s slopes.

To Forbes, from Survival’s Director, Stephen Corry:

Since when did being a ‘hero of philanthropy’ (Forbes, March 4) involve invading a tribe’s sacred hills, destroying the forests they live in and devastating their lives?

That’s what Anil Agarwal, majority owner and chairman of Vedanta Resources, is doing in Orissa, India. His motive is simply profit, but Mr Agarwal’s plans will destroy one of India’s most remote, and self-sufficient, tribes – the Dongria Kondh. If Mr Agarwal were a true philanthropist, he would talk to the people most affected by his company’s massive industrial projects and respect what they want, rather than blithely assume that what is good for his bank balance is also good for the Dongria Kondh – it isn’t.

Stephen Corry
Director, Survival International