Tribes Alive

Shooting stills and video, Patrick and Sue Cunningham spent six months travelling the length of the Xingu River, in central Brazil. They visited 48 tribal villages, and met people from 17 ethnic groups.

Because the area is home to some of the most belligerent Indians in the Amazon, it has so far suffered less than most from the depredations of modern man.

But the 21st century is bringing intensive threats to the environmental and cultural integrity of the area.

This video, a short extract of a longer documentary, highlights some of the threats, while celebrating the vitality and vibrancy of the diverse traditional tribal cultures found along the length of the river.

The video is a project of the Tribes Alive initiative of Indigenous People's Cultural Support Trust, a non-profit charity registered in England. tribesalive.org or ipcst.org.

In 1989 the World Bank pulled out of a plan to build a series of huge hydroelectric dams on the Xingu River in the centre of Brazil. The dams were judged a potential social and environmental catastrophe, highlighted by the largest combined demonstration by the indigenous tribal people of the area ever staged.

In 2008, the dams were back on the agenda, and the Indians came together again to fight the new proposal.

The Belo Monte dam would be the third largest in the world. As much earth moving would be required to build it as was needed to build the Panama Canal.

Yet the Brazilian government has been trying to railroad the scheme through on a very tight timescale, riding roughshod over the tatters of Brazilian environmental legislation and ignoring the requirements of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which Brazil had voted to endorse less than a year before.

A development of this size, with the potential to reverse much of the progress Brazil has made in the last few years in reducing the rate of deforestation, should be fully discussed, with all its ramifications fully explored in order to reach a balanced and reasoned decision about its environmental, social and financial viability before deciding if it should be built or if it should be abandoned forever.

This video includes footage from the demonstration and attempts to highlight the problems the scheme will bring to this so-far well preserved area of the Amazon.

In the Brazilian Amazon, there are hundreds of indigenous tribes that have lived sustainably for thousands of years. The rainforest sustains them, and their way of life has sustained and preserved the forest. The Surui is one of these tribes.

For more information on the Surui, their work with Google Earth Outreach, and Producer/Director Denise Zmekhol, please visit:

green21.org/blog/climate-change/trading-bows-and-arrows-for-laptops/

This film shows the purposeful destruction of Amazon rainforest by ranchers. A man from the Enawene Nawe tribe explains the desperate situation.

Their land has been left barren, all the animals have fled and the tribe's people are struggling to survive.

Nevertheless, the ranchers are still actively expanding their operations. Please help the Enawene Nawe to protect the forest by supporting Survival International:

survival-international.org/tribes/enawenenawe

Boots and training shoes are not the first things that spring to mind when you think about the causes of rainforest destruction and climate change. 'Slaughtering the Amazon' shows the connections between beef and leather production in the Amazon and illegal deforestation, financed by some of our best known global footwear brands.