The last free people on the planet

[Smithee]

‘The last free people on the planet’

In small pockets around the world live isolated indigenous communities, groups that, even though they have had run-ins with their neighbours or Westerners, prefer to avoid or resist any further contact. Although we sometime call them ‘uncontacted,’ a more accurate description is probably ‘voluntarily isolated’ or ‘withdrawn’ or ‘evasive.’ Many of these groups have tragic histories of encounters with outsiders — too much ‘contact’ — where they fought to preserve their isolation and, usually, came up much worse off than their more numerous intruders.

The point is, if you want to help isolated people, leave them alone. You can’t know the history of contact with indigenous people and continue to entertain the delusion that more of Us is good for Them. No amount of after-the-fact immunization or other Western technologies will compensate for the initial devastation. The condition of indigenous populations in most settler societies should sober us up before we start saying how much we’re going to ‘help’ ‘uncontacted’ Indians.

Maybe if the situation of Native Americans, Maori, Aboriginal Australians and other indigenous peoples improves markedly over the next couple of decades, we can start talking about ‘helping’ out the indigenous people who’ve thus far been very clear that they don’t want our help. But there’s plenty of evidence in our societies that we’re not on the cusp of a great leap forward.

Read more at blogs.plos.org/neuroanthropology/2011/02/09/%E2%80%98the-last-free-people-on-the-planet%E2%80%99/

[Azaziel]

Very interesting, thanks for posting