solation 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
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