Aerial photographs of an isolated community of indigenous people in the Amazon basin, near the border shared by Brazil and Peru, were released this week to show that they exist but may be endangered by illegal logging. One picture, taken by the Brazilian government, showed two men, painted red, brandishing bows and arrows at the camera-bearing plane flying low over the dense rain forest. In another picture, about 15 men, women and children who were not painted looked up from thatched huts. Survival International, an organization based in London whose mission is to help tribal peoples to “defend their lives, protect their lands and determine their own futures,” said the pictures were taken as part of several flights over the thinly populated upper reaches of the Amazon, in Acre, a Brazilian state. The Brazilian government conducts such photographic operations to locate the scattered tribes and monitor their well-being. Anthropologists say the government’s practice in recent years has been to track these remote people by air or from boats, but to leave them alone.
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