The Korubo or Korubu, also known as the , are a largely uncontacted, Panoan-speaking

indigenous people There is no generally accepted definition of Indigenous peoples, although in the 21st century the focus has been on self-identification, cultural difference from other groups in a state, a special relationship with their traditional territ ...

Brazil Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in South America. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, fifth-largest country by area and the List of countries and dependencies by population ...

living in the lower

Vale do Javari Vale do Javari (English language: Javari Valley) is one of the largest indigenous territories in Brazil, encompassing 85,444.82 km2 (32,990 mi2) – an area larger than Austria. It is named after the Javari River, the most important r ...

in the western

Amazon Basin The Amazon basin is the part of South America drained by the Amazon River and its tributary, tributaries. The Amazon drainage basin covers an area of about , or about 35.5 percent of the South American continent. It is located in the countries ...

. The group calls themselves , and in Portuguese they are referred to as ''caceteiros'' (clubbers). Much of what the outside world knows of this group is based on the research of Brazilian explorer

Sydney Possuelo Sydney Ferreira Possuelo (born 19 April 1940, in Santos Dumont) is a Brazilian explorer, social activist and ethnographer who is considered the leading authority on Brazil's remaining isolated Indigenous Peoples. Life and career Sydney Possuelo ...

, who first contacted the tribe in October 1996, and journalist Paul Raffaele.

Region

The Flecheiros live in the far west of

, in the Vale do Javari Indigenous Territory, an area covering . Access to the Vale do Javari Indigenous Territory is limited by the government of Brazil to protect the indigenous groups inhabiting the area and the environment on which they depend for their traditional lifeways from exploitation by loggers, miners, poachers, drug traffickers and others. Several other indigenous peoples live in this territory, including the Kanamari and the Tsohom Djapa, who speak languages in the Katukina family, the

Matis The Matis people (also called Matsë in their own native language) are an indigenous people of Brazil. Outsiders sometimes call them the Jaguar People, but they do not like the name. They currently live in the far west of Brazil, in the Vale d ...

, the Marubo, the Kulina Pano and the Matses or Mayoruna, who speak

Panoan languages Panoan (also Pánoan, Panoano, Panoana, Páno) is a family of languages spoken in western Brazil, eastern Peru, and northern Bolivia. It is possibly a branch of a larger Pano–Tacanan family. Genetic relations The Panoan family is generally bel ...

like the Korubo. The region is also home to certain other groups of

uncontacted peoples Uncontacted peoples are groups of Indigenous peoples living without sustained contact with neighbouring communities and the world community. Groups who decide to remain uncontacted are referred to as indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation. Leg ...

. Contact with uncontacted peoples is prohibited by the government of Brazil, even with respect to other indigenous groups living traditional lifeways, but state capacity is low in these areas and monitoring or enforcement is difficult.

History

As early as the 1920s, clashes between rubber tappers and the Korubo led to violence. Logging and other economic activity along the Itui river in the 1960s precipitated a series of violent clashes with the Korubo which caused Brazil's

FUNAI is a Japanese consumer electronics company headquartered in Daitō, Osaka. Currently, it is in liquidation. Apart from producing its own branded electronic products, it was also an OEM providing assembled televisions and video players/recor ...

to initiate contact in the early 1970s. Contact was difficult to establish and the agency lost seven civil servants in attempts to establish a peaceful relation with them, including FUNAI member (and close friend of Syndey Possuelo) Raimundo (Sobral) Batista Magalhães, on August 22, 1997 by Korubo warrior Ta'avan. Sobral was attempting to take back a tarpaulin stolen by the Korubo. A dispute between about 20 members and the main tribe caused the two bands to separate. Soon after it broke away from the larger Korubo, the splinter group was chased away by the settlers of Lodario, killing two members. Led by a warrior Ta'avan, the Korubo later killed three loggers. Despite FUNAI's efforts, the main tribe continues to be in complete isolation, but the whereas the smaller band of Korubo were successfully contacted in 1996 and have frequent interaction with neighbouring settlements and

employees. FUNAI's policy since the 1980s has been to minimize contact with otherwise voluntarily isolated indigenous tribes. "Uncontacted" as a label can be misleading, with some scholars and activists preferring the description "living in voluntary isolation". The Korubo have experience with recognizing non-indigenous people, and weapons and are generally hostile to interlopers. They are, however, likely to be immunologically naive. Access to the Vale do Javari Indigenous Territory is limited to protect the indigenous groups inhabiting the area and the environment on which they depend for their traditional lifeways from exploitation by loggers, miners, poachers, drug traffickers and others. Several other indigenous peoples live in this territory, including the Kanamari and the Tsohom Djapa, who speak languages in the Katukina family, the Marubo, the Kulina Pano, the

and the Matses or Mayoruna, who speak

like the Korubo. The region is also home to certain other groups of

. FUNAI helps the contacted portion of the Korubo by providing vaccines, antimalarial medication and other services. In 2014/2015, a conflict between the Matis and the Korubo resulted in two Matis fatalities and seven to fifteen Korbuo fatalities. Population figures of the main tribe are unknown but estimated from aerial reconnaissance of houses to be a few hundred individuals.

Culture

Their hunting and weapon of choice is the club and, aside from poison darts they use no other ranged weapons - their workday is about 4–5 hours long, and they often live inside large, communal huts known as malocas. Both men and women paint themselves with a red dye from the roucou plant. Both men and women wear little clothing. ''The Unconquered: In Search of the Amazon's Lost Tribes'', First Edition, Crown Publishers, United States, 2011 The Korubo hunt

spider monkey Spider monkeys are New World monkeys belonging to the genus ''Ateles'', part of the subfamily Atelinae, family Atelidae. Like other atelines, they are found in tropical forests of Central and South America, from southern Mexico to Brazil. The g ...

peccary Peccaries (also javelinas or skunk pigs) are pig-like ungulates of the family Tayassuidae (New World pigs). They are found throughout Central and South America, Trinidad in the Caribbean, and in the southwestern area of North America. Peccari ...

birds Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class (biology), class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the Oviparity, laying of Eggshell, hard-shelled eggs, a high Metabolism, metabolic rate, a fou ...

and wild pig, among other species. They grow bananas,

manioc ''Manihot esculenta'', common name, commonly called cassava, manioc, or yuca (among numerous regional names), is a woody shrub of the spurge family, Euphorbiaceae, native to South America, from Brazil, Paraguay and parts of the Andes. Although ...

and maize in clearings. A leading cause of illness and death within the tribe is by

malaria Malaria is a Mosquito-borne disease, mosquito-borne infectious disease that affects vertebrates and ''Anopheles'' mosquitoes. Human malaria causes Signs and symptoms, symptoms that typically include fever, Fatigue (medical), fatigue, vomitin ...

Western Reporting

National Geographic Magazine ''National Geographic'' (formerly ''The National Geographic Magazine'', sometimes branded as ''Nat Geo'') is an American monthly magazine published by National Geographic Partners. The magazine was founded in 1888 as a scholarly journal, nine ...

'' published an article about them in its August 2003 edition called ''After First Contact''. More recently, in its April 2005 edition, The Smithsonian published an article about the same tribe called ''Out of Time''.

Notes

External links