The Awá Need You

Uncontacted Indians face annihilation

The Awá are one of the last nomadic hunter-gatherer tribes in Brazil. About 60 Awá have no contact with outsiders.
Although most live in legally recognized reserves, the Awá are hemmed into ever smaller spaces as loggers, settlers and cattle ranchers invade their land and cut down their forest.
The Awá are a small tribe living in the Amazon state of Maranhão. They are one of only two nomadic hunter-gatherer tribes remaining in Brazil.

Some are uncontacted, ranging from tiny family groups living in the last fragments of Maranhão’s rapidly dwindling rainforest outside legally recognized territories, to approximately 40 individuals living in the Araribóia reserve.

In the 1970s huge iron ore deposits were discovered in the region. This led to the Great Carajás Programme, a development project funded by the EU and the World Bank which included building a mine and a railway.

The Awá and other indigenous peoples saw their lands opened up to unprecedented invasions by outsiders.

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