isolated peoples living within their borders. For instance, in an ordinance of 17 March 2020, the National Indian Foundation of Brazil transferred the responsibility to protect isolated peoples to its regional offices, despite the lack of qualified staffs and the insufficiency of structural conditions to assume such task.
Face to this new threat and the carelessness of some governments, Indigenous Peoples who live in territories shared with isolated peoples have mobilized in order to stem the spread of Covid-19, in particular by closing access to their territories, by reactivating "self-defense committees," and by urging the international community to protect the human rights of Indigenous tribes living in the Amazon. In Brazil, in the State of Pará, the Mudurukus living along the Tapajós river have posted signs aimed at preventing foreigners from entering their territory. The International Working Group on Indigenous Peoples Living in Voluntary Isolation or in Initial Contact in the Amazon and Gran Chaco (PIACI IW) has issued several public recommendations, calling for States to intensify surveillance measures of illegal activities in protected territories, to establish adequate health emergency plans which respect the rights of these peoples, or to work in collaboration with the contacted tribes that live in territories shared with other uncontacted tribes.
Large collective houses of circular shape, called yano or shabono, in which the Yanomami (Brazil) live. Source: Guilherme Gnipper Trevisan
If it is still too early to accurately measure the consequences that the Covid-19 pandemic could have on isolated Indigenous peoples of the Amazon, the scenario of an ethnocidal crisis is taking shape. Once again, the violations of their right to live and remain in isolation threaten their survival. While many States around the world have imposed drastic policies of containment to their entire populations and punitive measures for failure to comply with stay-at-home orders, disrespecting the quarantine of those for whom isolation is a collective right and a choice seems even more contradictory. In both cases, isolation indeed constitutes a collective strategy of preservation facing the current pandemic. The reflections of anthropologist Bruce Albert about these political dissonances shed light on the paradoxes of societies (still) nourished by colonialism and its contemporary avatars: "Homo industrialis lives now, as Claude Lévi-Strauss reminded us in 2004, 'under some sort of internal poisoning regime'. In Saudade do Brasil, he added: 'Having become its own victim, it is the turn of Western civilization to feel threatened.'” As the world is trying to navigate the Covid-19 pandemic and to face the “threat of the unknown,” will this experience lead to a greater awareness about the need to respect the rights to isolation and self-determination hold by the Peoples of the Amazon? Certainly, in the Age of Covid-19, the human rights pandemic cannot be left in the shadow and unaddressed.
*Laura Cahier is currently a PhD Candidate in Law at the University of Aix-Marseille, France and the representative of the Institut des Amériques in Washington, DC (Georgetown University). Her thesis research focuses on the rights of Indigenous women in the Americas and their socio-legal mobilizations to denounce intersectional forms of violence. She is a former intern at UNPO.
Cover: Interactive map showing the presence of Indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation and initial contact in the Amazon region. However, the existence and location of many other isolated Indigenous groups remains to be confirmed, due to their remoteness and isolation. Source: Uncontactedtribes.org
BELLIER, Irène, ‘Quels droits pour les peuples autochtones ?’, interview, le Blob, 11 janvier 2019.
BOURCIER, Nicolas, ‘Coronavirus : « Les Amérindiens ont compris que les Blancs ne peuvent rien pour eux »’, Le Monde, 13 avril 2020.
COJTÍ, Demetrio, ‘El efecto etnocida del Coronavirus en los pueblos indígenas’, Cultural Survival, 2 avril 2020.
Commission Interaméricaine des Droits de