Watch a rare video from the isolated Amazon, alone in the forest for 22 years since the rest of the tribe was murdered

Remarkable images have been published of an unindigenous native man who has lived alone in an Amazonian forest for at least 22 years.

Semi-naked and vigorously swinging an ax while he is shooting down a tree, the man supposed to be He has never been filmed as clearly before and appears to be in excellent condition.

"He is doing very well, hunting, maintaining plantations of papaya, corn," said Altair Algayer, regional coordinator for the Brazilian government. Funai in the Amazon state of Rondônia, who was with a team that filmed the images remotely. "He has good health and fitness by doing all these exercises."

Known as "the native man in the hole", he would be the only survivor of an isolated tribe. It hunts forest pigs, birds and monkeys with a bow and arrows and traps in hidden holes filled with sharpened woods. He and his group were known to have dug holes and his hammock is stretched to one in his house.

Lumberjacks, farmers, and hoarders murdered and deported indigenous populations to the area in the 1970s and 1980s, and it is believed that the only survivor of a group of six people murdered during the 1970s and 1980s was killed. a farmer attack in 1995. It was located in 1996 and has since been followed by Funai. A glimpse of his face filmed in 1998 was shown in the Brazilian documentary Corumbiara .

Funai's policy is to avoid contact with isolated groups and to protect the area since the 1990s. The Tanaru Native Reserve was legally established in 2015. Axes, machetes and seeds Traditionally planted by natives were left to man, said Algayer, but he clearly wants nothing to do with the dominant society.

understand his decision, "said Algayer." It's his sign of resistance, and a bit of repudiation, hate, knowing the story he's gone through. "

Fiona Watson, director of research and defense at Survival International, a non-profit group, the images are "extraordinary" given that the 8,070 hectares of protected forest in which humans live are completely surrounded by ranches and farms.

"Funai has a duty to show that he is alive," she said. "The crucial thing is that Funai has managed to keep his territory."

The Survivors from other indigenous groups in the area described how farmers fired on their backs when they fled raids on their villages, and in 2005 she joined a Funai mission on the reserve and saw the holes dug by the man around his territory, his house and his plantations – although u she did not see the man himself.

alive gives you hope, "she said. "He is the ultimate symbol, if you will."

Funai specialists believe that there are 113 isolated tribes living in the Brazilian Amazon – of which 27 groups have been confirmed – and one tribe living outside. There are also 15 tribes not contracted in Peru, said Mr Watson, and others in Bolivia, Ecuador and Colombia. The tribes hunt with torches and bows and arrows and while their languages ​​belong to linguistic groups, or "trunks", they can also differ considerably from each other.

Some tribes are nomadic hunter-gatherers and fishermen – like the Awá in the state of Maranhão on the east side of the Amazon, who, like 'the native man in the hole Lives in smaller reserves that are essentially forest oases surrounded by deforested lands. Others, including some living on the western fringes of the Amazon, plant bananas, corn, potatoes and other crops. In these areas near the Peruvian border, it is thought that isolated groups could have escaped a rubber boom a century ago, when many indigenous peoples were enslaved and had avoided contacting them since. . Other groups have been discovered while the Amazon is gradually being destroyed.

"The irony is that we discover that there are more of these isolated people than we thought. But it is also worrying that their cover is blown, "Watson said.