Kind: captions
Language: en
We're standing there. Everyone is
waiting cuz at any moment an arrow could
just fly through your neck. And there's
people holding shotguns. And the
anthropologist, this little guy is
standing there in the front and he's
going, "No mole." He's going,
"Brothers." And then then it happened.
Then you start hearing people screaming,
"Mos, Mosko." And people are screaming
and women are lifting children and
running into the huts and the dogs and
chickens are going nuts. And I mean,
>> fear, fear,
>> fear. He's going, "Look there. He has a
bow. He has a bow." And we're looking up
the beach and there's just this clan
walking down the beach with these seven
foot bows and they're hunched over and
they're pointing at us. They're going,
"Look at that one." They're going,
"Look, there's a gun there." And you can
see them communicating to each other.
And the butterflies are swirling off the
beach and they can hit a spider monkey
out of the treetops at 40 m. They can
sneak up and you will never know they're
there. And so when that arrow passes
through your body, you'll only have a
moment to realize it before you fall
over. In order for any of this to make
sense, I have to show you this footage.
And this has not been shown ever before.
This is a world first.
The following is a conversation with
Paul Rosley, his third time on the
podcast. Paul is a naturalist, explorer,
writer, and is someone who has dedicated
his life to protecting the Amazon
rainforest and celebrating the beauty of
the natural world. He has a new book
coming out in a few days titled Jungle
Keeper that you should definitely go
pre-order now. It tells some intense
stories about his time in the jungle
over the past several years, building up
to a few epic recent events, including a
new full-on extended encounter with an
unconted tribe that we discuss in this
podcast. Both the book and audio book
are great. I highly recommend it. If you
would like to support Paul and his
incredible team in their mission to
protect the jungle, go to
junglekeepers.org.
You can help with donations or by
spreading the word or checking out the
gala that Paul is hosting in New York on
January 22nd in a few days. They are
doing all they can to help raise funds
for the mission of safeguarding as much
of the rainforest as possible and I
think it's a mission worth fighting for.
The Amazon jungle is one of the most
special and beautiful places on Earth.
As an aside, allow me to look back
briefly and mention something that I've
been struggling with a bit. For context,
I traveled to the Amazon rainforest with
Paul a while back. It was an adventure
of a lifetime with lots of crazy twists
and turns. We did record a podcast out
there, literally in the jungle, episode
429, if you want to go check it out. It
was awesome. And we also recorded a
bunch of disperate footage of the
journey just for fun. And I would still
love to somehow put all that together
into a cohesive video in case it's
interesting to someone, but I've learned
just how difficult it is to organize and
edit a pile of chaotically recorded
footage like that. So, let's see if I
can pull it off. But in any case, this
kind of raw vlog style video is
something that I would love to be able
to do more of as a way to celebrate
amazing human beings like Paul and
others, including everyday people who I
meet on my travels. So, I'll keep
trying, tinkering, learning, and I ask
for your patience and support along the
way. Now, back to our regular scheduled
programming.
This is the Lex Freedman podcast. To
support it, please check out our
sponsors in the description where you
can also find links to contact me, ask
questions, give feedback, and so on. And
now, dear friends, here's Paul Rosley.
We've survived a challenging time out in
the jungle about a year and a half ago.
And since then, your life has
increasingly gotten more intense. So,
you've achieved the incredible feat of
saving now more than 130,000 acres of
rainforest. And the goal is that you're
working towards is protecting 200,000
acres more.
>> Yeah.
>> And doing so while facing extreme danger
from narcos, narcot traffickers,
so-called cocaine mafia in an escalating
drug war. This is insane. These are new
developments. illegal loggers, as we've
talked about before, gold miners, and
the incredible recent encounter with uh
a non-conted tribe, and we'll talk about
all of this. So, your new book, Jungle
Keeper, opens with the killing of two
loggers by the warriors of a non-conted
tribe, the Mashkapiro, in August 2024.
Mhm. And then you reveal that you had
your own dramatic encounter with the
tribe 2 months later in October 2024. So
uh if I may, let me read uh the opening
of the book. Far out on the western edge
of the Amazon rainforest, deep in the
Peruvian jungle, a pair of loggers
plunged their chainsaws into the
buttressed roots of an ancient ironwood.
An ironwood or shiua wako of this size
is a giant among giants, an emergence
sentinel that reaches heights of 160 ft
towering over the rest of the canopy. Uh
I've read that many are over a thousand
years old by the way as an aside. And
you've found ones that are 1200 years
old.
>> Incredibly old.
>> Anyway, you continue. This particular
tree has started its life as a tiny
sapling in the great jungle. A story
that began before the Spanish reached
Peru, long before the United States was
even a dream. At a time when uh Leonardo
da Vinci was still honing his talents in
a far away part of the world through the
Renaissance, the First and Second World
Wars, and the birth of our grandparents,
this tree was out there slowly charging
upward, anonymous, just one pillar among
the billions of others. But on this day
in August 2024, when the two loggers
worked, this witness of the centuries
came crashing down through the canopy
with such cataclysmic power that it
shook the earth. And then you go on to
talk about how the shaking of the earth
was was felt and heard by the unconted
tribe. So uh you go on to describe how
these particular loggers were murdered
by the unconted uh tribe of Mshapiro.
What do we know about these warriors of
the unconted tribe?
>> We know that across the Amazon basin,
there's still perhaps thousands of clans
of quote unquote uncontacted peoples,
people that are living in nomadic
isolation in what remains of the intact
Amazon basin and want to remain that
way. And so what happened with these
loggers was that local people told them,
don't don't go out there. don't don't go
into these territories. And what happens
is that people that aren't from there's
this thing with the jungle. People don't
believe
that it's as wild as as the legends say.
And so when they say there's there's
kalattos out there, there's there's
there's wild people out there, these
loggers from another region go, "Yeah,
that's you know, some some story. We're
we're fine. We'll go. We have shotguns."
They don't realize you're dealing with a
civilization of people that is still
nomadic, still uses bamboo tipped
arrows, still lives naked in the Amazon
rainforest, has knowledge of medicines
that we've we have yet to to encounter
or may never discover, and that they can
hit a spider monkey out of the treetops
at 40 m. And so, while you're using a
chainsaw, they can sneak up and you will
never know they're there. And so when
that arrow passes through your body,
you'll only have a moment to realize it
before you fall over.
>> And we're looking at uh something you
posted on your Instagram,
>> which are the arrows that they use,
which are bigger than you. So they're
like six, seven feet.
>> Six, seven feet, more like 7 ft.
>> And that's incredibly sharp. They cure
it over the fire and they have a way of
sharpening it. That edge of bamboo
becomes incredibly like knife sharp. You
can cut meat with it easily. I've done
it. These arrows, look, look at that. I
mean, I'm 5'9. That that that's easily a
7 foot arrow.
>> Yeah. So, for people who are just
listening, this quotequote arrow is
really a spear. Some people would think
it was a spear, but they're shooting
this thing with a gigantic bow. That's
crazy.
Yeah. And so to be holding that, look at
that. They even they even twist the
fletching so the arrow spins in the air.
They have incredible craftsmanship. And
then you see all the all the little
string on there is plant fibers that
they've woven. And then this is them.
Yeah. The warriors of the tribe. The
warriors of the tribe. And And so the
fact that we're sitting here talking on
microphones and that we have airplanes
and cell phones and all the things that
we have in the modern world and there's
still we still live in this age where
there's right now at this moment people
living out in the jungle who have been
there since before history is an
incredible thing. Let me look this up on
perplexity. What are the technologies
we modern humans have that the
Mashkapira do not? It's just interesting
to think about the kind of technologies
we take for granted.
energy and power. Obviously, all the
electricity generation and grids and
batteries and solar panels and electric
motors, metals and materials,
mass-produced steel, aluminum,
>> advanced alloys, plastics, composits,
glass, concrete, all of those things,
tools, of course, and the machinery, the
infrastructure of roads and bridges and
buildings and the weapons of war,
everything but the spears and the arrows
that they have and the medicine and
biology. Of course, they probably have
complicated medicines
that they've developed for their own
>> uh that are available within the jungle.
>> That entire list is no.
>> No, I mean metal think you have to be
able to excavate into the earth and and
forge metal. These people don't even as
a one of the anth local anthropologist
said to me, a Peruvian anthropologist,
he said, you know, people think of them
as stone age tribes and he was like,
they don't have stones. He's like, they
don't So, they don't know that water,
they see water that they drink. They
don't know that water freezes cuz
they've never seen it. They don't know
what that water boils cuz they don't
have they don't even make clay pots.
They just have their bamboo and their
string. And so, they're living an
incredibly simple life. So, all all of
that, I mean, even, you know, a camera
is a miracle to them. Like, it's like,
yeah, it's it you have to bend your mind
to even understand how how far back they
are. It's like looking into thousands of
years ago, like stone age. Well, they
hear the sounds of the chainsaws, the
sounds of machinery in the distance. I
wonder how they can possibly comprehend
what that is. I think they view it as
like a demonic destructive force.
And um when I show you the encounter
that we had, the we got a few takeaways.
We we left with more questions than
answers, but one of the things that they
were able to communicate across the
language barrier was, "Why are you
cutting down the trees? They don't like
it.
>> Yeah. That represents to them the danger
that the outside world brings, the
destruction that the outside world
brings. They see us as the destroyers of
worlds.
>> So tell me about this encounter in
October of uh 2024.
>> So in order to tell you about that
encounter, I think we need to orient
people into where we're talking about.
We're talking about this river that runs
through the western edge of the Amazon
rainforest that you know you know well
now after spending time there with me.
It's a high tributary of the Amazon
rainforest where you know you have the
main river channel and then smaller and
smaller and smaller and smaller
tributaries.
And the smaller you get, the less
trafficked they are. And so this river
has remained wild through the centuries.
And even during the '9s when there was a
mahogany boom where people went out for
mahogany trees, there was very few
people going up this river. And so 20
years ago when I first got to the region
and people were telling me that there's
uncontacted tribes out there. It was it
was always in the realm of something um
you know it's like people say there's
there's there's Bigfoot or don't go
there, it's haunted or something. You
know, it's like it was like a a tall
tale almost. And even the Peruvian
government at the time that I went to
Peru first, which was 2006,
their official position was that the
tribes are a myth. There's no such thing
as the tribes. That that was the
official position. And you just you
would hear these stories of people that
got shot. You'd meet someone high up a
river 4 days up river deep in the Amazon
that had an arrow and you'd look at this
thing and it had this, you know, mega
gravity.
And so as we've created Jungle Keepers
and now we're protecting 130,000 acres
of this river, we're protecting the
plants and the animals and the ancient
trees and trying to preserve the
ecosystem and counting the butterflies
and conducting ecological surveys. And
what we've inadvertently found ourselves
the caretakers of is the fact that these
people in order to continue living have
to remain isolated, want to remain
isolated. That's their one mandate as a
as a civilization. the tribes of the of
these of the of the Mashkapiro. And so
in October, we were, you know, as jungle
keepers now, we're working with the
indigenous people. What we do is we take
loggers and gold miners and make them
into rangers and give them better jobs
and we try to protect the forest. And
those people who live up in the remote
indigenous community, they called us on
a satellite phone and they said,
"Directors,
you've been working with us and telling
us you want to help us The tribes are
coming out. What do we do?
>> So, even they don't really know when the
tribes emerge from the deep jungle what
to do.
>> They were terrified.
>> What was your thinking when you got the
phone call?
>> When we got the phone call, it was a mix
of, you know, we should keep cuz we're
over here like trying to get land
concessions and doing all this important
work. And part of me was like, that's
that can't be real. So, we're going to
keep keep our heads down.
>> Bigfoot is emerging from the forest.
>> Yeah. Sure. Sure. And then cuz we got
the call, we hung up and we said, "Okay,
maybe tomorrow if they're like still
there or something." And then it was
crazy cuz it was it it was probably
about noon and we had an important day
of meetings. We had a meeting with the
police. We had a meeting with the land
owner. We were trying to do all this
stuff for the conservation work. And
then I got together with the core team
of directors, JJ, Mos, and Stefan. And
we and we said, "Wait, if this is real,
we have to get there like now, like now
now." And so we dropped what we were
doing, canceled the meetings, we put
other people on the meetings, we got a
boat, we called Ignasio, we called our
most hardcore ranger who has been shot
who in 2019 was shot in the head by an
arrow um and still bears the scar and he
barely survived. And we said, "Look,
this is going down." He said, "I already
know cuz the whole river already knows."
And he said, we said, "Can you get us
there by tomorrow morning?" And he said,
"Look, it's a two-day journey by boat,
so no." And we said, "Is there any way
you can get us there?" And he went,
"I'll get you there." And so we got a
couple sacks of rice, a couple cans of
tuna, our dry bags, our tents. We got on
a boat by 6:00 p.m. And we started
riding up the river
>> through the night through the night. And
so two-day boat journey that we're
trying to flex in one night. And so I
was at the front with the with the
headlamp with the torch.
>> And so the first few hours it was clear.
And that comet, remember that comet that
was going? There was that comet in the
sky. I remember looking at the comet and
going somehow I was like, "This is it."
>> I knew this was it. And the first few
hours was clear and the stars was out
and it was beautiful. And then it
clouded over and the lightning started
and then it just apocalypse downpoured.
And from midnight until 8 am, it was
just the front of the boat with the
light. And it was just Star Wars vision
of just, you know, um, raindrops and
galaxies and and and moths flying in my
eye. And and you people don't realize
you can get hypothermia in the tropics.
But it's like as you're going at night,
even if it's 80° outside in the rain, in
the wind at night in a lightning storm,
you're freezing. And so by, you know,
2:00 a.m., I'm convulsively shivering.
And we're using the crocodile eyes, the
Cayman eyes on the side of the river as
cuz we it was so dark we couldn't see
where we were going. So those shine back
at you. So I'm I was finding the Cayman
eyes and then motioning with the light
to Ignasio where to go and he knew how
to find the channel. We had to jump the
waterfalls.
We did the two-day boat ride in one
night.
>> Nice. And [clears throat] we got there
and we arrive at this community where
and it's morning now and the howler
monkeys are calling over the jungle and
you know the little naked children are
all by the side and everyone's scared
and we get a hug from this guy Bacho who
we know and they're like come in come in
come in and they're like the tribe came
out yesterday that we saw a few of them
on the beach and they're gone now.
And so we collapsed. We fell asleep.
Rained the whole day. That night we went
out and we looked for them and there was
this crazy moment where we're standing
on this beach and there were their
footprints were there and the the local
indigenous anthropologists was standing
there and we're standing at the edge of
this beach looking out into the into the
Amazon beyond and there's just all this
wreckage. It looked like something very
Cor McCarthy, just dark sky, iron
clouds, and and we're standing there,
everyone is waiting cuz at any moment an
arrow could just fly through your neck.
And there's people holding shotguns. And
the anthropologist, this little guy is
standing there in the front and he's
going, "No mole." He's going, "Brothers,
there's only a few words that inter
intersect between the the languages."
And he's going, "Brothers, we're here.
We don't want to hurt you." He's
speaking in in the Yin language and he's
saying, "Come out." And you can tell by
their footprints. The trackers explained
this to us. You could see it was just
the balls of their feet. So right as we
pulled up to the beach, they had run. So
they were there listening to us. And
he's going, "No mole, come out. It's
okay. Lay down your arms. We'll lay down
ours. No mole." Just keep kept saying,
"No mole." And nothing happened. And we
went back to the village. We went to
sleep. We wake up the next morning and
it's 5:00 a.m.
And
again, we're trying to save the jungle.
We're in a race against time to get
these land concessions. And so my team
like Mosen and Stfan, uh JJ couldn't
come cuz he was in town actually signing
paperwork and interviewing loggers and
land owners. And also he didn't think
that there was any chance this was going
to be real cuz in his entire 50s
something years in the Amazon, he's
never seen them. And so we're getting
ready to leave in the morning. We had
tents on the boat and Agnosio comes up
to me and he goes, "You're my director,
right? You're my boss." And I went,
"Yeah." He goes, "I need to talk to you
like a friend." I said, "Yeah, shoot,
shoot, go." And he goes, "You'd be an
idiot to leave right now." He goes,
"They're coming." And so he convinced us
to stay. We pull our tents off the boat.
Stefan and Mosen go off with their
cameras. They start shooting, you know,
people. These are these are monkey
eaters and fishermen, the the the the
community that we're in. And
everything's quiet. And I opened my
laptop and I was working just writing
writing my book. And then then it
happened. Then you start hearing people
screaming mash go mash go and people are
screaming and women are lifting children
and running into the huts and the dogs
and chickens are going nuts and
>> so fear fear
>> fear because we should say kind of the
obvious thing is as far as anyone
remembers any encounters any minimal
small encounters with these tribes have
been violent
>> extremely violent these tribes have
remained alive because of their violence
almost like the Spartans or the
Comanches they've seem to have adopted
violence as a first response to contact.
>> Uh maybe you can correct me on this, but
I read that uh in the late 19th century,
early 20th century, there was
documentation of encounters
with these tribes by the private armies
of the rubber barons.
>> And those encounters were from the
rubber barons army's perspective
violent. Yeah.
>> And so maybe the lesson they learned the
unconted tribes is that any interaction
with the outside world is going to have
to be violent because they have to
defend themselves.
>> Yeah. You had colonial missionaries in
the 16 1700s. Then you had the rubber
barons late 1800s into the 1900s just
periods of extraction and domination and
cruelty. And these tribes their
grandparents must have told them when
the outside world comes you shoot first.
That's the only thing that's going to
keep you alive. Do you think the memory
of that those violent encounters is
defining to how they think about the
world? Yeah, because even in my lifetime
there in the 20 years I've spent in the
Amazon, Ignasio was shot in the head. My
friend Victor survived a violent
encounter where they murdered somebody
on a beach. I mean, they've shot
numerous people. They've even shot
people who were trying to help them.
People who are trying to give them
clothing and bananas. they've just where
they they call it porcupining them where
they find a body on the beach with so
many arrows that when they fall over all
the arrows are sticking up and so they
think and they'll do it out of curiosity
too where it's like hey you're wearing a
suit that's weird we've never seen
anybody in a black and white suit and
then get a you know the way Teddy
Roosevelt would shoot a bird for science
they're like they'll just what they just
want to look at you and so they they're
operating on a different they don't have
a moral system that we have or
understand they're just they're truly
wild.
>> How does Ignasio think about them?
Because they almost killed him.
>> Yes, it depends on the mood you get him
in because if you ask him, one day I
asked him, I said, "If you could see the
people that shot you in the head, what
would you say to them?" And he looked at
me with that Agnosio look. And he said,
"I wouldn't say anything. I would kill
as many of them as I could." I said,
"Okay." He also had a time where he was
in a really remote guard station working
for the Ministry of Culture and they
showed up and he knew that they were
going to kill him. And so he climbed up
into the the peak of the of the little
structure there and just like, you know,
like a dog in a car, that greenhouse
effect in the top at midday with the sun
beating down, he was huddled over a
mattress while they were walking on the
deck, moving pots and pans and looking
at our items and artifacts. And he knew
that if he was found, they'd kill him.
But if he stayed up there, he was
literally frying to death. He said he
was soaking the mattress. He was he
could feel himself dying for 2 hours. He
had to stay there. And he is constantly
making this decision of if I come out, I
die. If I stay here, I probably die.
He's like, "Probably die is better than
definitely die." So he was terrified.
And so as they're screaming, "Mosh, go!"
And everybody's running and women are
lifting children. Ignasio comes and
finds me. And you can see in his eyes,
you can see when somebody has that PTSD
response where he's breathing heavy.
He's he's he's moving behind trees. He's
not He's keeping me close to him and
he's going, "Look there. He has a bow.
He has a bow." And we're looking up the
beach and there's just this clan of
naked men walking down the beach with
these 7ft bows and they're hunched over
and they're pointing at us. They're
going, "Look at that one." They're
going, "Look, there's a gun there." And
you can see them communicating to each
other. And the butterflies are swirling
off the beach. And you know, in these
moments, you go, am I am I entering a
moment that I is this is this a one-way
door? Is this is this not something that
is this an irreversible situation?
Because there's an unfolding situation
where they're coming at towards us. Are
they going to attack? What do they want?
Is there going to be I mean, I'm I'm I
am soaked in chills right now just
talking about it because I remember
standing there and going, there's no way
this is real life. I I it's burned into
my memory them walking down the beach
and seeing them with the bows and of
course you know Stefan is up there just
firing off pictures and and and Mosen is
down getting video and the the community
that we're with people had you know you
hear shotgun shells loading home and
them and them loading it but they're
also they're getting ready and there's
this one guy this anthropologist named
Raml who has been the only person who
has communicated with them peacefully
he did it in 2013 where He stood on the
beach and he spoke to them. He knows
enough of the local dialect that
overlaps with theirs that he can speak
to them. And so as they're coming down
the beach, the butterflies are flying up
and we're all waiting. And again,
shotgun, you're talking, you know, how
many meters? 30, 40 m, I don't know,
accurate for an arrow. You loose a 7ft
arrow that weighs nothing. You're
talking about 300 m easy. They can shoot
you from across the river. So Ignasio
was like pulling me and he was like
down. He's like, you go down. And he was
like, "You stay behind this tree." And
he's like, "You watch them from there."
He's like, "Watch out. That guy has an
arrow." He's like, "He's watching
everyone cuz you could see." He's like,
"This is how it happens."
>> Did you think you might This might be
the last day you have on this earth.
Were you afraid?
>> I was. Yeah. Yeah. Of course I was
afraid. Um, it's you're with you're with
I'm with my two best friends and a bunch
of people that I work very closely with
and you're in the middle of nowhere and
there's no help coming and you're with
like, you know, 26 people and there's 50
of the tribe that you can see and you
know that they're surrounding us.
There's all men on the other side of the
river and then we had we had guns
looking back towards the jungle cuz we
knew we were being surrounded. And so
again, this is always this is always the
story of of of someone's uncle, brother,
cousin tells a story that happened and
now it's happening. And it's not
happening in the shadows. It's not
happening in the middle of the night.
It's happening in broad daylight.
They're they're walking out onto the
beach, you know? It's like it's like the
first time they saw the dinosaurs in
Jurassic Park. You're going, "Uh-uh,
there's no way." And you're you are kind
of walking on the knife edge of uh and
it's funny you say Stefan was taking
pictures because there's two ways to
think of the situation. This is
fascinating or this is extremely
dangerous and it's both. It is a nice
edge. So you could approach it one of
the two ways like if I die I die. I'm
going to take some good pictures. But
also we're there that was also our
mission. You know as as the directors of
Jungle Keepers we're working with this
community to ensure that their lifestyle
can continue. and they're saying, "Hey,
that's great, but as an indigenous
community, we're dealing with these
people that come out and raid our stuff,
try and steal our women, that kill our
hunters, and now they're coming out. We
want you to see it." And so documenting
it is part of our job. We have to show
what happened that day. And so those
guys were shooting um and then yes, very
seriously. It's actually so Mosen's wife
and I, we we always joked about like,
"Oh, if the tribe ever comes out, like
you stand in front of him, like you take
the arrow. He has kids. And it was, you
know, that day it was like we were
strategically positioning ourselves
being like, you know, you down. You
cannot get killed. And it was, you start
in those moments to go, okay, where can
where will I be safe from arrows? Where
can I run to the river if they if they
come over? And you start planning, okay,
if I jump into the river, I was going,
okay, I got my bag. I have a can of
tuna. I have a flashlight. I was like,
if I jump into the river and float down
and I live, I'm still days up river. And
so you you start going through all these
things. But
>> and of course the the Moska Piro people
are thinking exactly the same thing
probably.
>> Well well the the interesting thing is
that they're initiating the contact,
right? They're they are the ones coming
out of the jungle and confronting us.
And fundamentally that contact is
they're at least giving peace a chance.
Is this they're trying the peaceful
contact first? Correct. Or was there a
violent element? Like what did you sense
in the caution of them emerging to the
beach? Fear.
>> Fear.
>> As they came out, you could see fear on
them because the way they were hunched
over, the way they had their bows ready,
they were worried. And so they came and
you know, Raml is standing there as
closer than any of us at the edge of on
one side of the river. And it was like,
you know, shirts versus skins. It was
two tribes looking at each other with a
thousand years of civilization between
them. And Raml's going, "Put down your
bows. Put down your bows and we can
talk." And he's nom. He kept saying no.
He kept saying, "Brothers, brothers,
please put down your
>> So Noly means brother in a language that
they might be able to understand."
>> Nomole means brother in a language that
they do understand. And it's and it
seems like they refer to themselves as
the Nomalies. the brothers.
>> So potentially that's what they call
themselves as the tribes in the moles.
>> Exactly. And actually the
anthropologists that we've been speaking
to post this event have been explaining
to us that mashkopro, you know, piro is
the is the the the group that they're
from these these various nomadic tribes
and mashko basically means like wild
piro. And so the one thing we know they
call themselves is nom.
>> So at the end of this we might converge
towards the name of this tribe being
Namo versus Mashkapi. the Namo. Yeah.
Seems like the most current or at least
their self-appointed identity is the
brothers Namo.
>> Anyway, there's these shredded warriors
on the beach.
>> Yeah. [laughter]
>> With 7 foot arrows.
>> And we're all standing there. And so the
the the first thing again, you just
think of like, you know, the peace pipe
in the the old stories.
>> And the first thing is let's make them
an offering of peace. And so they got a
canoe with no motor and we piled it with
plantains, like just full of plantains,
16 ft of of endless green bananas. And
then I mean the balls on this guy, the
the anthropologist. He gets into the
river, takes the canoe, and it's the dry
season, so the river is only about 3 4
feet deep at it at the channel. And so
he walks this thing out. There's one man
walking in the face of all these
warriors and he takes the boat and he
pushes it towards them and they rush out
and they start grabbing the bananas and
they're not going, "Okay, we will unload
these bananas and use them later."
They're my bananas and you're grabbing
your bananas and they're fighting and
they're yelling and they're all grabbing
and they're they're grabbing them and
then they push the boat back and he
talks to them a little bit and again
it's not a perfect translation. So he's
you know he's saying where have you come
from? What do you want? Who's your
leader? He's trying to establish these
things and they're saying things and
they all sort of talk at the same time
like a flock of birds. They're not they
don't have it wasn't like one man speaks
and there was no women. The women were
the women were nowhere to be seen.
And actually at one point as we were
preparing I think it was while we were
preparing the second canoe of bananas
there was a moment of absolute panic and
and it happened when there was a noise
behind us and you just hear a bunch of
shotguns swing behind us and you know
Mosen goes down. I go running away from
the river now cuz again I want to see it
coming if there's an attack coming. And
I'm standing, me and this guy were
sharing a tree as cover and he's got a
shotgun and he's looking back into the
forest and peering through. And what was
happening was the women of the tribe had
come silent foot and they were just
pulling the yuca out of the ground and
taking the banana plants and ruining the
farm completely. But they were raiding
the farm behind us while the men were
talking up here. So again, were they
were they peacefully contacting us or
were they like, "Hey, we need some food,
so go make a diversion and and and take
the take the food out back."
>> I mean, you really were surrounded.
>> We were completely surrounded.
>> So they they could
have murdered all of you probably
>> easily. We were we were out outnumbered
five to one at the least.
>> Yeah. And it's probably fair to say that
part of the reason they did maybe they
wanted peace, but part of the reason is
they didn't know how deep this goes.
They didn't know if you have backup.
They don't know if we have backup. They
also they had questions. They were
asking
the some of their questions were
incredible. How do we tell the
difference between
how do we know who the good guys and the
bad guys are? Cuz to them, all you
outsiders are the same. So why who are
the ones cutting down the trees?
>> And those are the ones they know are the
bad guys.
>> Well, the big trees seem to have
incredible significance to them. They're
they're significant to us in a different
way, but to them it's it's it's a it's
offensive on a on an almost religious
level to cut a big tree as if you're as
if you're killing their gods.
>> So there's a spirituality to the trees
that
>> it seems like that.
>> And so the whoever's cutting them down
is a source of destruction on spiritual
existential
level.
>> Yeah. Well, how why would you destroy
our home? I think they're right.
>> Yeah. In in a deep sense, the unconted
tribes represent the deep jungle. And so
if they're threatened, that means the
jungle. The deep jungle is threatened.
Yeah. I mean, they are the human voice
of the jungle. And they they're asking
questions. They're also demanding, you
know, they're clapping at us and they're
waving and they're saying, "Send more.
Send send more bananas." And so they
loaded up another boat and they pushed
another boat out and this time they gave
them some rope. They all had rope tied
around their waists, penises tied up,
but they love rope. And some of them
were wearing rope that they had made,
which is brown or or reddish. And then
some of them were wearing rope that they
had clearly pillaged from logging camps
or the communities cuz it was modern
nylon paracord. And they had this wound
around their waists like a thick belt.
And they took the second boat and that
they had some some rope and they had
some plantains on there. So, some of
these guys might have been the ones that
murdered the loggers. Could be
>> from a couple months before that.
Absolutely. Could be. But what Raml said
as he was talking to them, he turned to
us and he said, you know, this group, he
said, the other groups call me the
grandfather. He said, this group, he
said, I don't know any of these. He
said, this is first contact. He said,
this is the first time this group is
talking to us. And you saw people from
maybe 12 years old to what looks like 40
something like a like a banged up 40
>> and and no really old people and no
women.
>> So this is a particular clanic
tribe and never contacted.
[clears throat]
>> Yeah. Is there just from your memory
interesting aspects about the way they
were trying to communicate like you said
clapping? I I think it's a from an
anthropology perspective from a human
perspective. Fascinating. How do you
talk to people from an unconted tribe
like this? So clapping, yelling.
>> It's interesting to know that there's
not a hierarchy where there's a leader
that represents or is that we know for
sure. Before even coming to talk to you
about this, we passed this through
anthropologists and ethicists and people
and we, you know, we said, "Look, is it
even can we talk about this?" Because if
you talk about this and you tell people
there's these unconted tribes, people
have misconceptions. They go, "They're
the last free people on Earth. They're
living the real life. We need to go join
them. We want to see them. We want to
photograph. There's all this bad stuff
that happens. And all these people want
us to be left alone. So, the last thing
we want to do is is kill the thing we're
trying to protect and tell the world.
But at the same time, they're speaking
out. They're saying, "Stop cutting our
trees. Leave us alone." And so, if we're
not successful in in the greater jungle
keepers mission of protecting this
river, they cease to exist. And so
advocating for these people requires us
to have this conversation. It requires
us to have this footage and to show the
world and then leave them alone.
In order for any of this to make sense,
I have to show you this footage. And
this has not been shown ever before.
This is a world first. I mean, up until
now, that's the other thing. You know,
we're sitting there this day and and you
know, the only thing you've ever seen
are these blurry images of from
someone's cell phone from 100 meters
away of the unconted tribes and we're
sitting there with, you know, 800 mm
with a 2x teleconverter and, you know,
R5s.
And so this is as we're looking through
the farms
anticipating the tribe coming. I'll put
a little bit of volume so you can hear
it.
And then you can see this is the moment.
This is us running when they're like
they're out. They're coming down the
beach.
>> Yeah,
>> we're just Oh, wow.
Oh, wow.
>> You see how many thousands of
butterflies?
But look at the way they move. Look at
the way they point. Look at him with his
bow. Wow.
There it is.
They're trying to figure out
>> what they're looking at.
>> Uhhuh.
>> And they didn't know what the cameras
are. They So, this was the guy is
looking out the back. So, he's he's
going there's something back here. He
could hear the women in the farm.
And I'm looking in every direction cuz
I'm going which way is the arrow coming
from? But see, he has his shotgun. This
is just like a farm shotgun. Even if he
shot it, you have to use a stick to bang
out the shell. But see, as they come
closer, they start laying down their
See, he's laying down his bow and arrow.
>> They understand. No, no more.
>> So, these are these are warriors. And
the way they were at first moving, it
really look like they're ready for
violence. And now they're all standing
in a relaxed
>> Yeah.
>> And smiling. Are they smiling?
>> Smiles come at some point.
>> I would say that one of these guys
seemed like uh in a leadership position.
and he did most of the talking.
>> What What's with the different hand
gestures? This the holding your hand up
to the face. All of this means
something.
>> All of this means something. Some had
red smeared on their faces, some had
yellow.
>> Did you have a sense of hierarchy at
all? Like the boss?
>> Again, there was just these two dominant
guys and like this guy and one other guy
who looked almost like him, like his
brother.
>> Yeah.
>> Gesturing.
>> Wow. Wow,
>> this is incredible, Paul.
>> Yeah,
>> you see the rope.
>> Yeah,
>> some of that rope is
>> Yeah, I can kind of tell who the who the
bosses are,
>> right?
>> All right, so a few of the
But see, even that as he's pointing,
we're going. What are you What are you
What are you pointing at?
You guys are nuts. You [laughter] guys
are nuts.
Oh,
>> you see as though they're rushing in,
there's this desperation. They're
hungry.
>> They also
>> Is that in the water? Is that Raml in
the water?
>> The in this particular video, it's a guy
named Liner.
>> But like, see these guys, they're
fighting over. It's not that we're all
going to share it later. It's [music]
>> I get mine, you get yours. And so, what
does that what does that mean?
>> Yeah.
>> But here, they're in peaceful mode. Now,
after we'd given them
after we'd given them several boatloads
of bananas, things did calm down. Raml
said to them, you know, look, we've
given you what we can give you. We gave
you sugarcane. We gave you boatloads of
plantains.
And so then there came a time where
things were a little more relaxed. They
were walking around. We were at one
point we we we had a we had a great
moment where we we'd given them the the
the plantains. We' given them the
bananas. and and he said, "Look, this is
that's it." He said, "We we've given you
what what you asked for. You asked for
bananas. We we don't cut the trees here.
All of us here are not tree cutters.
We're indigenous people." And and he he
couldn't explain who the hell we were,
but they were like, "We don't cut the
trees. We're not the loggers." And
they're like, "Okay." So then at some
point, you know, Agnasio went out and
like sort of like started, you know,
he'd go like this and they'd go like
this and, you know, he like danced a
little bit, they dance a little bit, and
then there was this very human moment of
just sort of joking.
>> So even Agnosio warmed up.
>> Even Agnosio warmed up once he realized
it didn't seem like anyone was going to
die that day. Uh things did calm down.
It was a false sense of security. Um
here, I'll show you. There's a couple
more things that are relevant here,
though.
Yeah, this is just them interacting with
the boat.
>> This is truly incredible, man.
>> But then they don't have boats. They
don't have stone tools. They don't
>> Imagine if you showed them ice,
>> you know? They wouldn't.
This is historic.
>> I mean, it's the I mean, you hear Percy
Faucet encountering the tribes. We've
heard of anecdotal accounts of the
tribes. This is the first time that the
tribes have been filmed. that we can
hear their voices that there's a
documented interaction happening.
>> I mean this now look how comfortable
he's getting. He's so close. They asked
him for his shirt. He gave his shirt.
>> Incredible.
>> They asked him for his pants. He gave
his pants. He was in his underwear.
>> You see this
the shirt that's over his shoulder?
Ignasio took off his jungle keeper shirt
and threw it to the anthropologist. And
then the anthropologist walked it off
and threw it to them. So over the
shoulder of that uncontacted naked
warrior is a jungle keeper shirt with
the logo showing. [laughter] So they're
like their second shirt. He just
upgraded that guy's status in the tribe.
He's going to be the new boss with that
shirt. He's got a he's got a dope ass
polo. He didn't even have to order it.
But yeah, this is in like the aftermath
when things were calm. And then my sort
of moment with this that really stuck
with me was when Raml said to me, he
said, you know, they he said, "They're
asking about you." And I said, "What are
they asking?" I said, "You know, me." He
goes, "Yeah, they're asking about you."
And you know, again, I'm not tall, but
I'm I compared to the people in the
village, I was a little bit taller and
big shoulders. And he said, "They said,
you look like a warrior." He said,
"Could you come forward?" He said, "Show
them that you don't mean any harm." He
said, "Show them your palms." And so he
pulled me up onto the beach. And this
was right before they left. But see, I
hold up my hands. Listen.
And they sang back.
>> They're singing.
>> They raise their hands. I raise my
hands. Wow.
And then
and then we were left with watching them
walk off the beach into the jungle with
everything that we'd given them
and they were gone. And so we went down
river the next day and the community
said to us, "Okay, now you understand
this is real. This is terrifying. and
you felt that fear. You have a duty if
you're going to protect this river to
protect us from them and to help us
figure out what future they want. If
they want to come to us, if they want to
learn farming, if they whatever it is,
um you know, that's that's fine, but
they were like, "We need protection from
you guys." And then in this video in the
beginning, I'm sort of narrating to the
camera and walking around right as
they're coming up the beach, but you see
this guy
right there in the blue shirt.
>> Mhm.
>> That's George. And he was very friendly,
very confident with this. He said,
"Don't be scared. They're not going to
hurt us." And the next day, we went back
to town. You know, long journey back to
town. Go to sleep. We wake up in the
morning and we find out that the
following early morning our friends in
the community had said, "Okay, the tribe
is gone." We gave them all the things
they wanted. We gave them sugarcane,
bananas. We said, "Please come back.
You're welcome here anytime." And George
was driving a boat and there was people
on the boat. And as they were going up
river, the tribe, 200 of the tribe ran
out, surrounded the boat, and they
started firing arrows, and everybody
else could hit the deck and get under
the under the the benches and hide
behind bags of rice. George was driving
and he was leaning back as he's driving
and he's driving as fast as he can and
one arrow came in just above his scapula
and came out by his belly button and so
he had that 7ft arrow tip through him
and so they pulled him out and I saw the
boat afterward and there was just you
know horrific amounts of blood all over
the boat and he had to be medevaced out
and somehow he lived and we were able to
help getting him a helicopter getting
him evaced all this but again You just
go,
you know, these these these people came
out of the jungle and they asked for
bananas. We gave them bananas and we in
every way possible said, "We mean peace.
We we want friendship with you." And and
then the next day uh they attacked. What
do you think happened? Why do you think
their mind turned? [snorts] Or
maybe this has to do with the role of
violence in their society. Maybe they
it's so
uh integrated into how they interact
with the world that they don't even see
that as a fundamental shift in the
interaction.
I don't know. I don't know what to make
of it. And the only thing I can think is
that the way they hid the women from us,
you don't know. for them maybe were not
allowed to see their women, you know, or
or cuz the one thing that we got was
that as George's boat and southern boat
were going up river the which is how
they live these it's not like they were
doing anything wrong. These people live
in a community days into the Amazon.
They were going fishing and so they came
around a bend and I think they spooked
the tribe. The tribe might have just
acted defensively and said, "I we don't
know who this is." The motors could have
set them off. We don't know. Um they but
they they shot him. And then the other
thing is the the thing with the
necklace. I've asked anthropologists
about this and their answer was that at
this point they said you know more than
we do but that
Yeah. Cuz two of them had the exact same
item around their necks and it seems to
be uh a Brazil nut and then some sort of
casing around the side and it looked
like animal teeth. Mhm.
>> positioned in there. It's like what are
you carry? Are you carrying medicine?
Are you carrying some sort of a totem?
Are you
>> But both of them and it's not a
comfortable thing to wear around your
neck. You know, a grapefruit sized
bigger.
>> Do you have a sense that that's a
container or is it just like a totem?
>> It seems like a container. They didn't
let it get wet. They cared for it. The
guy in this picture. So he's got this
this is a piece of tree fiber that he
has it on and then and then he's gotten
his hands on Brazil nut sacks, plastic
sacks from one of the farms across the
river. And so they just they just take
they take and one of them got a machete
and he was walking as they were leaving
again during that period where it got
friendly. He was leaving and he had the
machete and he was playing with the
machete and like swinging it at
butterflies and one of my friends this
guy Bacho, he goes, "Oh," he goes
machete. He was like, you know, dropped
the machete and the guy just looked at
him and was like, "Yeah, come and get
it." Uh, [snorts]
>> you know, I was like, "Yeah, you cross
the river and see what happens."
[laughter]
>> Do you think he figured out or they
later figured out how to use a machete?
>> Oh, they know machete.
>> They understand machet.
>> Yeah. Yeah. They do raids for machetes.
>> Okay.
>> Yeah.
>> They understand the power of a sharpened
metal.
>> It's I mean, it's a it's a Excalibur
sword to them, you know.
>> Um, but yeah, that that one that one has
stuck with me because I go, "What were
they carrying in there?"
>> So, what are some of the questions? like
if you can know everything you'd want to
know about them.
>> So maybe in the space of communication
and language that's real