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Five Awá families from Posto Awá, an outpost created by the Brazilian government's indigenous affairs agency, embarked on an overnight trip to the forest. The Awá, like them, live in sedentary communities and are bored by the forest – especially the older members who grew up there – so that these incursions resume their link with their traditions. It was not until 1987 that Brazil adopted its current policy of non-contact with isolated indigenous groups.Credit: photographs by Charlie Hamilton James / National Geographic
Incredible photos provide a glimpse into the life of the "world's most endangered tribe", which still hunts with bows and arrows to survive in its shrinking forest.
There are only about 80 nomadic members of the Awá, one of the last "uncontacted" tribes of the Amazon, in a forest reserve of Maranhão in Brazil.
They live as they have for centuries, using bows and arrows to hunt armadillos and picking wild honey and babassu nuts from the dense primal forest.
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The images come from the October 2018 issue of National Geographic magazine.
An image shows an Awá hunter with a small deer on his back while holding his bow and arrows, followed by a hunting dog.
Another shows a group of women and a baby bathing in a river in pristine virgin forest.
Like the forest, the very existence of the Awás is threatened by loggers, miners and drug traffickers invading their homes.
In Posto Awá, the villagers enjoy a morning bath. The red and yellow-footed turtles that they hold will probably be eaten.
Isolated groups depend on the forest and its water sources for survival, but are forced to move almost constantly because of the threat from dangerous foreigners.
They live on a reserve protected by law, but she did not arrest the bandits.
With 75% of the original forest cover lost in Maranhão, the most valuable wood remains on the protected indigenous Arariboia Land.
The extraction of timber is illegal in this area, which opens the door to a criminal enterprise.
Logging trucks cross secondary roads not controlled by the police and deliver their payload to secret sawmills.
((Credit: photographs by Charlie Hamilton James / National Geographic))
The Awá live in a state of "almost constant" escape from chainsaws and forest fires.
The Guajajara tribe also resides in the same region, but has come into contact with an isolated society over the decades.
Tainaky Tenetehar, from the Guajajara tribe, told National Geographic how he and his group of forest wardens were protecting the "isolated" from the leak.
He added: "Who will fight for the isolated, if not us?"
"Lumberjacks enter all around the perimeter of the native land.
An awá hunter comes home with a small deer. Sometimes hunters see signs of isolados, their isolated brothers. A hundred or so Awá still live as nomads in the Amazon rainforest, despite growing pressures exerted by loggers and settlers.
"Their intention is to reach the center where the isolates are. They have no choice but to flee when the loggers arrive.
Rangers burned logging trucks, seized weapons and chainsaws to keep criminals away.
The existence of Awá has provided legal protection for nearly 4,800 square kilometers of forested land, but has not put an end to illegal logging.
This story originally appeared in The Sun.
