Librivox: Through the Brazilian Wilderness.
but I didn't know the Brazilian Colonel in charge of the trip also gave some lectures on the trip, and that too can be found on Librivox:
The Roosevelt-Rondon Scientific-Expedition and the Telegraph Line Commission
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John Grisham's book about greedy relatives and the daughter who doesn't want her daddy's money is partly about the evangelical outreach to isolated Amazon tribes: the Testament can be borrowed from internet archives for free registration. LINK
the audiobook is at Scribd if you are a member: LINK
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there are lots of documentaries about "uncontacted tribes" on Youtube.
I'm not sure I'd trust any of them: why? Because when I see films about tribes and people's customs that I am personally acquainted with, often they get things wrong: and not just a little wrong, but "hugely" wrong.
But excuse my sarcasm: Often outsiders project their images of utopia on such tribes.
In many cultures, when a stranger asks you something personal, they tell you what they think you want to hear. This was true in many African tribes, but also something you run into here in the Philippines.
I remember the Navajo used to joke about white anthropology students asking them personal stuff about their beliefs... and then, relating the story to each other, they'd say: And I told them this....and everyone would laugh.
How does this affect how books are written about the Amazon utopia?
They fly in, visit a tribe, show their quaint customs and voila, instant documentary.
So everyone is honky dorey with this, and show everyone is happy happy happy, including women who lose children to infectious diseases, and risk death in childbirth, and who often had been kidnapped from their family and forced to marry some guy in the more aggressive tribe, who are often sexually abused and exploited by the men,both in the tribe and by outsiders, including miners etc. and of course by visiting anthropologists. Because hey, the myth of the happy promiscuous native girls are widespread too.
here is an essay on anthropologists and "natives" in movies. LINK
and then there were the famous "Tasaday" tribe living in caves here in the Philippines. Except they were locals who played at being cave dwellers. LINK
except nowadays they'd be hiding their cellphones.
and this film is an expose of anthropology myth of the pristine natives who are actually violent. But the film is not just on anthropologists who exploit isolated tribes, but is about do gooders who didn't quite understand what they are doing: And how they just didn't realize that giving a live attenuated measles vaccine to a tribe suffering from chronic malnutrition (which dulls the immune system) and who are vulnerable to measles for genetic reasons might result in measles deaths. Duh.
(the film mentions giving gamma globulin with the shot: This is still done if you have to give measles vaccine to immunocompromised patients: it actually lowers the immune response, but does protect you from getting the disease from the shot).
hello: You don't just go in and give out shots, especially experimental vaccines. You live there, set up a clinic, and then people learn to trust you.
and for heaven's sake, you use a trusted vaccine whose side effects are known, not a new one.
and then people wonder about why there is an "anti vax" hysteria going around.
My cynicism is that such vaccines save lives, but you don't use experimental vaccines on poor people as guinea pigs and then ignore the harm you might be doing. (see the Dengvaxia controversy here, which also resulted in deaths of children who were not properly screened before being given the shot).
sigh. the result of that scandal is that some people here are not getting their kids injected for any disease, so there have been deaths from measles and even reported cases of polio and diphtheria.
and the worst part? The huge outlay of money for the Dengue vaccine shots meant less money to do things that actually might stop Dengue, such as spraying, building decent drainage system and sewers, pushing people to empty water from garbage cans, using insect repellent and nets, etc.
So one side effect is that we are in the midst of a Dengue epidemic: Dr. Angi's daughter in law was hospitalized earlier this year, and our cook's granddaughter was hospitalized last week in the provinces with it, and who knows how many other cases have been around (since many cases are mild and not diagnosed).
No I am not an "anti vaxer".
measles vaccines saves hundreds of thousands of lives every year, and that is overlooked in the hysteria.
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