On Friday, Heather Pringle reported in Science News that some scientists and Brazil's government disagree if the people who came down with flu received enough medical treatment. 'Only time will tell if they reacted quickly enough to divert a catastrophic epidemic.' FUNAI refers to Brazil's Indian affairs department.

'We can only hope that were able to give out treatment before the sickness was spread to the rest of the tribe in the forest,' says Chris Fagan, executive director at the Upper Amazon Conservancy in Jackson, Wyoming. Science News, from the journal Science, quoted Chris Fagan, executive director at the Upper Amazon Conservancy in Jackson, Wyoming. The European Community contributed funding.The situation though took another turn when the contacted people then went back to their forest home, Their return has observers worried that they still could spread the sickness back to their tribe. This article has been updated to correct the funding source of the Carajas development program. 'It's a very simple, direct message to the Minister of Justice,' Watson said. Watson and her colleagues are hoping that their new campaign will put pressure on Brazil to honor the Awa's legal right to their land and provide the funding needed to enforce the protected areas' borders. In August 2011, FUNAI officials were alarmed to find evidence of a fight between drug traffickers and uncontacted native people, who went missing after the violence. Other tribes have also been haunted by violent clashes. 'It's a violent part of the Amazon,' Watson said. The ranchers had taken his son, leaving Karapiru to believe him dead.

The man, Karapiru, had been living alone in the forest since 1975, when ranchers killed his daughter and wounded him and his son. In 1988, for example, townspeople in west Bahia, Brazil, met a lone native man who turned out to be of the Awa tribe. In addition, reports from Awa tribe members and from the Brazilian Indian affairs office FUNAI suggest that this land controversy can all too easily turn deadly. After iron ore was discovered in the area, the European Community and the World Bank even helped fund a railway and other developments in the region. After first contact with the Awa in 1973, the Brazilian government has opened up the region where the tribe has long roamed. Survival estimates that there are about 100 uncontacted Awa in addition to the 360 or so who have semi-settled in villages on their legally protected land.

Not only do clashes between native peoples and settlers sometimes result in violence, uncontacted people lack immunity to common diseases and can be felled by a simple flu virus. In fact, many are purposefully avoiding society after deadly run-ins with civilization in the past. Uncontacted tribespeople are often romanticized as 'primitive' people who aren't aware of the outside world, which is a myth, according to Survival. The most voiceless of these are uncontacted tribes, people who live without interaction with the outside world. Survival International estimates more than 150 million tribal people currently live in 60 countries worldwide. The issue of indigenous people's land rights is an international one. On her last visit, she told LiveScience, 'They were saying to me, 'We're suffering from hunger now.'' 'When the forest is destroyed, they either flee or they simply die,' said Survival's field director Fiona Watson, who has worked with and interviewed many of the 360 surviving Awa who are in contact with society.

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