One of Earth's Last Uncontacted Tribes

I mentioned a few days ago that I've been to tribal areas in the Amazon jungle. Here are a couple of remarkable photos of one of the last uncontacted tribes remaining in the world.

It is extraordinary to think that, in 2008, there remain about a hundred groups of people, scattered over the Earth, who know nothing of our world and we nothing of theirs, save a handful of brief encounters.

The uncontacted tribes, which are located in the jungles of South America, New Guinea and a remote and the beautiful and remote North Sentinel island in the Indian Ocean (the inhabitants of which have also responded to attempts at contact with extreme aggression) all have one thing in common - they want to be left alone.

More on the tribe here and here.

Having seen firsthand how tribes like this live, I can't help but feel sorry for these people. No matter how much people want to romanticize about their situation, there is no doubt they are incredibly poor, face high rates of infant mortality, have incredibly short life expectancy, and live on the barest subsistence level.

If handled correctly, I do think contact can ultimately make tribes like this better off. Almost without exception, once tribes are contacted, they don't cut themselves off from the outside world again. They usually benefit too much from gains from trade with "outsiders".

Having said that, I can certainly understand the perspective of others who think these tribes should be left alone. There are plenty of examples in history of tragedy and exploitation of tribal groups by outsiders.

There is a growing body of research that indicates people derive more happiness from having a better relative position to other people that they do from having a better absolute position. In other words, many (most?) people would rather make $50,000 per year in a world where the average is $25,000 than they would make $100,000 per year in a world where the average was $200,000.

The dilemma in contacting tribes like this is that it has the simultaneous effect of making them economically better off in absolute terms through gains in trade, while revealing to them their low relative position to the rest of the world. The question is whether or not the benefits exceed the harm?

Ultimately, most of these tribes will be contacted. What's most important is that this is done with respect for their dignity and for their rights as human beings. Part of that means involving them in the decision about how much contact with the outside world they want to have and not deciding this for them.