t affects an entire community is that very few people will be spared. […] Consequently, not only will they be sick, but nobody will be able to care for them or feed them, with the serious consequences that this will have on the group's ability to continue to survive without outside help.”
The current Covid-19 pandemic is certainly reminiscent of many infectious diseases that have threatened and decimated Indigenous peoples throughout the successive waves of forced contact with the protagonists of the "White Border” in the region. Among other infectious diseases, malaria, measles, and respiratory infections are said to have killed more than half of the peoples into which they were imported. In addition, Indigenous peoples living in voluntary isolation and initial contact cannot count on effective health care systems. In other words, while their immunological vulnerability is maximum, the response capacity of health services is minimal, underlines agroecologist Wilmar Bahamon. In a report published in 2019, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights expressed great concerns about the high risk of extinction of certain Peoples, such as the Nükak, due to epidemics, famines, environmental degradation, or the loss of their rites and languages. In these times of pandemic, the risk of ethnocide is, once again, exacerbated for the Peoples of the Amazon who live in voluntary isolation or initial contact.
Indeed, despite the delimitation of their lands as protected and intangible areas as well as the creation of buffer zones in most States of the Amazon region, one of the main threats to the survival of isolated peoples is the invasion of their lands by outsiders. In the current era of neo-colonialism, the region suffers from planned occupation and the installation of major development projects, which have justified multiple scientific, technical and military missions into their territories. Illegal loggers and miners, as well as agribusiness magnates have also been invading the areas which are home to Indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation and initial contact. Over the last weeks, in the Brazilian State of Rondônia, Indigenous organizations have reported the presence of garimpeiros (illegal gold miners) and madeireiros (timber traffickers) who have used the current health crisis as a cover to intensify their profit-driven invasions in the territories where the Karipuna people lives. Furthermore, while mining is illegal in Indigenous reserves under Brazilian law, President Jair Bolsonaro has recently introduced a bill which would open these lands to mining, oil and gas extraction, in the name of the so-called “development.” In a statement, Survival’s Uncontacted Tribes campaigner Sarah Shenker declared, “many of their territories are being invaded and stolen for logging, mining and agribusiness, with the encouragement of President Bolsonaro, who has virtually declared war on Brazil’s indigenous peoples.”
Goldminers working illegally on the territory of the Yanomami People (2003, Brazil). Source: Colin Jones, Survival International.
According to Douglas Rodrigues, specialist in indigenous health at the Universidade Federal de São Paulo, the only emergency plan which can guarantee the survival of these peoples is "the expulsion of the invaders and the protection of all lands where there are indications of [their] presence." In particular, for these Indigenous tribes, the right to self-determination, as guaranteed by the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples among other legal documents, should be understood as the guarantee of respect for their decision to remain in isolation, also called the no-contact principle. In other words, isolation is a strategy of collective preservation, allowing them to maintain their own systems of thought, their cultures, their languages and traditions, as well as to survive the threats caused by any forced contact with the outside world. As such, Article 26 of the American Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2016) enshrines the collective right of Indigenous Pe