In Brazil, the last representative of a tribe that has never crossed paths with civilization has died

Observers who have tracked the last non-contact tribe in the western Amazon for decades have found him dead in one of his huts. Independent.

Photo: IStock

He lived alone for over 25 years on an 80 square km plot of protected land and was known as "The Burrow Man" for his habit of digging deep holes to hunt or hide in animals.

Little is known about his tribe other than that it was left on the brink of extinction after attacks by local farmers in the 1970s that left the only surviving member who rejected contact with civilization.
Since 1996, officials from the Brazilian indigenous protection agency Funai have been tracking his movements through the indigenous territory of Tanar.

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They found him dead in a hammock in one of his huts on 23 August. He was estimated to have been between 55 and 65 years old.

Officially, he died of natural causes. There were no traces of the presence of other people at the scene, signs of violence or struggle.

The man's hut was in order, with utensils and items used by the natives in their usual places, officials said. Hut No. 53, as stated by Funai, was built the same way as all the others: a thatched structure with one entrance and exit, and a hole 2 meters deep inside.

Funai said the man's body was transported more than 1600 kilometers from the Tanaroo reservation in the state of Rondonia to Brasilia for a forensic examination. The agency did not say if the body would be returned.

Indigenous activists mourned the death of the Burrow Man and blamed the local pastoralists, who are believed to have exterminated his tribe to take his land.

When, in the early 1990s, Funai first discovered the unnamed tribe in Tanaroo land, they found the remains of houses that seemed to have been destroyed by tractors.

Monte Reel, a journalist and writer who has followed Funai's work in the region, wrote in his 2009 book Last of the Tribe: tractors, trying to hide their presence from the Funai searches. The perpetrators of the massacre were never punished.”

Fiona Watson, director of research and advocacy for Survival International, said: “No one knew the man’s name or even almost anything about his tribe – and with his death, the genocide of his people ended. For it really was a genocide - the deliberate destruction of an entire people by pastoralists, hungry for land and wealth. This last member of the tribe symbolized both the horrendous violence and cruelty that indigenous peoples around the world endure in the name of colonization and profit, as well as their resistance.

“We can only imagine the horrors he saw in his life, and the loneliness of his existence after the rest of his tribe was killed, but he strongly resisted all attempts at contact and made it clear that he just wanted to be left alone ", she added.

The man himself survived an assassination attempt on him in 2009 by armed intruders. At first, Funai feared he had been killed after they found two discarded shotgun shells in the forest.

The agency said the ranchers who own part of the land set aside for the Tanaroo Reservation were at fault. The owners vehemently oppose the protected status of the land, which forbids them from working it.

José Algaier, coordinator of the local organization Funai, told the Folha Altair newspaper at the time: “The owner of one of the farms is asking us to find a solution. He wants the Indian to be taken to another country.”

He added, "They made it clear they would shoot the Indian if they found him."

The “man from the hole” over the past years has never made contact with any representative of the outside world, no one has heard his voice and does not know what language his tribe spoke, reports Mirror. In 2018, Funai organized an expedition to Tanaroo's territory to find out if the Last of the Tribe was still alive and if the invaders had resumed their attacks on his territory. Then it was established that he lives in a small thatched hut, grows corn, cassava, papaya and bananas, and hunts animals. A hole was dug inside his hut to hide in case of an attack. He also scared away uninvited guests with arrows. During the expedition, the man was captured on camera.

In today's Brazil, after three years of President Jair Bolsonaro, Watson fears that the state will be on the side of the farmers. Throughout his tenure, the 66-year-old president, who is currently trailing in his race for re-election, has pushed for the abolition of indigenous reservation status and the opening of other protected lands for farming and mining.

He also presided over a surge in Amazonian deforestation, which reached a 15-year high last year despite Bolsonaro's pledge to end illegal logging by 2028. A recent report by a missionary group showed that violence against indigenous peoples increased dramatically during Bolsonaro's rule.

Watson said that the unnamed tribe of the Burrow Man will not be the last to be lost to history if private interests continue to come first in Brazil.

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“If President Bolsonaro and his agribusiness allies get their way, this story will repeat itself over and over again until all of the country’s indigenous peoples are wiped out,” she said.

The protected status of Tanaroo land is enshrined in the Land Protection Order (LPO), a temporary measure in place in seven indigenous territories across Brazil that prohibits economic activity in the area.

Survival International has stated that Bolsonaro plans to drop LPO. The charity supported the call from the Observatory for the Human Rights of Isolated and Indigenous Peoples to upgrade all LPOs and evict any farmers, loggers or miners who have taken up work on protected land.

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