© Carrie Vonderhaar, Ocean Futures Society/KQED

After 33 hours of slow and sweaty river travel, we arrived at the Rio Novo village in remote and little explored Vale do Javari (Javari Valley), along the sloping banks of the Ituí River, deep in the southwest corner of the Brazilian Amazon. This is the land of the Marubo, the largest and apparently most powerful Indian tribe in the Vale do Javari, and the first to make contact with the outside world some 150 years ago. 

The Marubo are among six contacted tribes scattered across the 8,500,000 hectares of the Vale do Javari. This remote jungle, the second largest indigenous territory in Brazil, isolates more than 3,500 contacted indigenous people from six contacted tribes—and an estimated 16 uncontacted tribes.


We have been invited to Rio Novo to witness the 9th annual meeting of the indigenous leaders of the Vale do Javari, organized by CIVAJA, the Indigenous Council of the Valley of Javari, where five of the six contacted tribes have gathered to discuss their concerns about health, education, the environment and the economy. 


Before we came here, we had all heard about these tribes and their unique ceremonies and rituals. About the Marubo, whose men heave a giant log drum on their shoulders from the forest to the maloca (house covered in ivorypalm straw), while the women flirtatiously tickle those they’ve tipped as potential husbands. About the Matis, who’ve earned the moniker of the Jaguar People for sporting whiskers and tattooing and decorating themselves much like the jaguar, and who are expert hunters, capturing prey with four-meter blowguns with poison darts with unmatched deftness. About the Kanamari, who chant traditional songs to ensure regeneration of life in their society and bounty in their forests. About the Mayoruna, who inject themselves with toxin from poison dart frogs to endow them with the strength and fortitude of keen hunters. And the Kulina, whose young men play their flutes to send love notes to their beloveds.


But nothing could prepare us for what we were about to see and hear at Rio Novo.


No foreign film crew has ever been known to witness this gathering. That is, until now.

© 2008 Ocean Futures Society and KQED. All rights reserved.