As images of dozens of isolated Indigenous Mashco Piro men and boys on a beach in the Peruvian Amazon sparked huge worldwide media coverage, questions remain about whether the government will finally mark off land for them after years of strife. The images released by the campaign group Survival International in early July show around 50 members of the Mashco Piro tribe asking for food from a village of Indigenous Yine people called Monte Salvado, which sits on the opposite bank of Las Piedras River in Peru’s southeastern Madre de Dios region. The images date from June 26 and 27. Two weeks later, another group of 17 appeared by the nearby village of Puerto Nuevo, said the NGO, which defends Indigenous rights, in an apparent distraction tactic while other members of the tribe raided plantains from Yine allotments. Ricardo García Pinedo, director of the general-directorate for the rights of Indigenous peoples at Peru’s Ministry of Culture, told Mongabay the videos were positive in that they provided “reliable evidence that Indigenous peoples in isolation exist” after some attempts to deny their existence in the country. He added that the group was asking for “plantains and rope” from the Monte Salvado community, with whom they have a “constant relationship.” The seldom-seen tribe live in the 829,941-hectare (2 million-acre) Madre de Dios Territorial Reserve, a protected area, but experts say their ancestral territory extends beyond it into several nearby forestry concessions. This overlap includes the Maderera Canales Tahuamanu (MCT) concession, which is certified…This article was originally published on Mongabay
The post After isolated tribes’ rare appearance in Peruvian Amazon, big questions remain for their future first appeared on EnviroLink Network.