As many as half of the estimated “uncontacted tribes” – meaning groups like the Sentinelese on a remote island in the Indian Ocean – face destruction from outside forces if governments don’t do more to treat them like endangered wild animals who live on protected preserves, according to a very splashy new report by London-based indigenous rights group Survival International.
Not among the solutions proposed by the group is a Caucasian mercenary employed by one of the logging or mining concerns to be injured and nursed back to health by a shaman from one of the tribes, undergo a spiritual transformation in which he sees the tribe and forest connected as one, realize the error of his ways, and then lead a violent uprising against his former employers because that would be too on the nose. Best let those things happen on their own rather than have one’s advocacy be accused of simply copying from the plot of Avatar or Ferngully: The Last Rainforest.