He was known as the last survivor of an uncontacted indigenous people and nicknamed Tanaru Indian Where Indio do buraco (“Indian of the hole”), because of his habit of digging deep holes in the huts where he lived.
This man who had been living in voluntary isolation for nearly three decades in the indigenous territory of Tanaru, an area covering 8,000 hectares in the state of Rondonia, in the Brazilian Amazon on the border with Bolivia, was found dead, on August 23, announced Funai, the Brazilian government agency for indigenous affairs. In 2018, Funai published images of a chance meeting with this man.
According the NGO Survivalthe indigenous land Tanaru is an island of jungle surrounded by vast cattle farms, in one of the most dangerous regions of Brazil, mainly due to illegal mining and deforestation.
Authorities did not say the man’s age or cause of death, but said they did not find “no signs of violence or struggle”. “Everything indicates that the death was due to natural causes”Funai said in a statement, adding that it found no evidence of the presence of other people at the scene.
Authorities believe the man spent 26 years alone wandering the jungle after members of his already tiny community slowly disappeared in the mid-1990s when loggers and ranchers took over the surrounding land.
800,000 indigenous people facing resource exploitation
“With his death, it is the end of the genocide of this indigenous people”said Fiona Watson, director of research at Survival, who visited Tanaru territory in 2004. “It was a real genocide, the deliberate elimination of an entire people by cattle herders hungry for land and wealth”she said.
According to Funai, the presence of isolated indigenous groups in Brazil, without contact with the rest of the world, has been detected in 114 places. An assessment that varies, however, according to the reports. According to the 2010 census, more than 800,000 people declare themselves indigenous to Brazil, a huge country of 212 million inhabitants.
More than half of these indigenous people live in the Amazon and many are threatened by large-scale and illegal exploitation of the natural resources on which they depend for their survival.