‘A computer, a radio, a drone and a shotgun': how missionaries are reaching out to Brazil's isolated peoples

The Guardian

5 days ago

Mayá is about 60 years old, has three children and more grandchildren than she can count. As the matriarch of the Korubo community in the Javari valley, Brazil, she led her people's first contact with the outside world in 1996, when they connected with the federal National Foundation for Indigenous Peoples (Funai).
Although she still lives in the Amazon, on 12 June she needed medical assistance in Tabatinga, a nearby municipality in Amazonas state, where members of her community who visit face 'white' diseases that still kill children almost 30 years after contact.
Uncertain whether she would return, she left behind a mysterious electronic device, whose messages in Portuguese or Spanish she listens to while braiding handicrafts.
'I am sure that God is a god of love; therefore, if he is a god of love, he will take me to heaven when I die, so that does not worry me. I would like to remind you of something, since you have forgotten one of the most important aspects of life – death – and the fact of being acceptable in the eyes of God. Let me explain it,' is one of the messages the device carries.
It is a curiosity that has become a source of amusement for the Korubo community and its matriarch. How it reached them is unclear. What is clear is that similar devices, called the Messenger, have been used to spread religious messages, despite proselytising being prohibited among uncontacted and recently contacted peoples, according to Brazilian law. Messenger devices are distributed by the US Baptist organisation In Touch Ministries, based in Atlanta, Georgia.
Uncontacted peoples, or 'peoples in voluntary isolation', avoid contact with modern society to protect their way of life and stay safe from violence or exploitation. They live in remote areas such as rainforests and deserts, maintaining traditional cultures free from outside influence. Governments and organisations aim to protect their rights and territories to prevent disease, cultural disruption and exploitation, safeguarding their autonomy and lands.
What constitutes contact?
In anthropology, 'contact' means interactions between cultural or social groups. 'Contacted' individuals have continuing relations with society. Contact can be direct, for example trade or conflict, or indirect, such as disease transmission. It involves cultural exchange and economic interactions. Colonial contact often imposed systems that disrupted Indigenous cultures. Brief or accidental interactions don't count as contact.
Where are their territories?
Most uncontacted peoples live in the Amazon basin, especially in Brazil and Peru, often within protected areas. Others are in the Gran Chaco, Andaman Islands, North Sentinel Island and West Papua. The Amazon basin, a vast region spanning several countries in South America, including Brazil, Peru, Colombia and Ecuador, is home to the largest number of uncontacted communities, with estimates suggesting there could be dozens of such groups living in isolation. Western Brazil and eastern Peru are known for having some of the last uncontacted groups, including some that live in voluntary isolation within protected Indigenous territories and national parks.
Is it essential to protect uncontacted peoples?
Some oppose protection, citing a lack of modern benefits, concerns about land use or safety issues. Advocates argue that they survive using natural resources, contact harms health and evangelisation weakens cultures. They emphasise these peoples' rights to their territories and the inability of governments to ensure their safety. Even after contact, Indigenous peoples have rights to their full traditional territories according to some national and international norms.
Why is the idea controversial?
Governments and NGOs work to protect uncontacted peoples' territories from logging, mining and agriculture as they threaten their survival. Demarcating protected zones reduces human activity and preserves the way of life within them. In some countries, such as Brazil, legislation requires the government to demarcate Indigenous territories in the event of identifying uncontacted peoples – a measure that often conflicts with economic interests linked to land rights and use.
Groups such as the New Tribes Mission and Youth With A Mission (YWAM) have long been active in the region, some employing covert methods such as secret audio devices and unauthorised visits to spread their faith. Recent incidents include an unauthorised missionary interacting with local people and building a church near an isolated Indigenous group along the Maia creek.
Seth Grey, chief operating officer of In Touch Ministries, confirmed that the organisation uses the solar-powered device to distribute religious content – and said he had he personally delivered some to the Wai Wai people in the Brazilian Amazon. While these devices have reportedly appeared in areas like the Javari valley where their use violates Brazilian policy, Grey insisted that In Touch does not distribute them in restricted regions, though he acknowledged that missionaries from other organisations may distribute these devices where they are not allowed.
The device is part of a product line with a clear strategy, according to In Touch: 'To ensure that the message of salvation of Jesus Christ is accessible to those who have never heard it.'
In addition to the Messenger, the company offers a flash drive 'for cases where Messenger may be frowned upon at customs', and even a microSD memory card so that religious material 'can be listened to secretly on a mobile phone'.
Missionary groups trying to reach uncontacted peoples have been identified in the region for several decades.
'We heard about a case in the late 1980s where a missionary from the New Tribes Mission approached and made contact with the Korubo people. There are even photos of this. What we know is that he managed to leave before being beaten,' says Fabrício Amorim, formerly the Funai coordinator in the Javari valley.
'During my time as coordinator, we had no record of any missionary attempts in the Korubo villages. Now, there is no doubt they're planning new incursions,' he says.
Proselytising extends to people living in voluntary isolation in the Javari territory. Nelly Marubo, head of the Funai-linked Javari valley regional coordination office, travelled to the Flores village of the Mayoruna group on 15 June for a meeting on fishery resource management. 'When we got there, there was a strange man interacting with the locals and building a church,' says Marubo.
She says the man, Samuel Severino da Silva Neto, was on Indigenous land without the required authorisation from Funai. Severino denied being a missionary. But Marubo says workers at the village health centre told her otherwise.
'He told them he came here to make first contact with the Indigenous peoples,' she says.
She believes his target was an isolated group that lives deep in the forest along the Maia creek. They interacted briefly with loggers in the 1970s and have opted against further contact for the past five decades. The village where Severino was found is just a few minutes by boat from the mouth of the creek.
In the official report that Marubo sent to Funai officials in Brasília, she stated that Severino had mapped locations along the Maia creek where he believed he had a chance of encountering the isolated people.
Severino did not respond to phone or email requests for comment.
The leading missionary organisation operating in the Javari territory is the New Tribes Mission of Brazil, a branch of the New Tribes Mission in the US, renamed Ethnos360 in 2017. Established in 1942, the organisation referred to Indigenous peoples as yet unreached by missionaries as 'brown gold'. The term was also formerly the name of the organisation's newsletter. Ethnos360's annual budget is about $80m (£59.5m).
The mission's base in Javari, located in the Marubo people's territory on the Itui River, had been operational for more than 60 years before being closed by order of the supreme court during the pandemic.
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The order remains in effect, but according to Nelly Marubo, missionaries visit frequently, arriving directly by aircraft without passing government control posts. 'They organise an event, right? A youth meeting, a student meeting. They come to the village to 'help', so to speak,' she says.
Bushe Matís, coordinator of the Union of Indigenous Peoples of the Javari Valley (Univaja), says: 'Their strategy has been innovative. They come offering artesian wells and solar panels.'
Missionary activity now threatens 13 of the 29 isolated peoples that Brazil officially recognises as definitively confirmed, according to the federal prosecutor's office.
Marcos Pepe Mayuruna was converted and 'trained' to be a pastor in Atalaia do Norte by US religious leaders. He says YWAM has a strong presence in the region.
'YWAM has a base here in the municipality. Many missionary agents have recently arrived here. They say they want to work with the Korubo, Matís, Marubo, Kanamari and Kulina groups,' he says, referring to most of the contacted groups of the Javari valley.
He confirms the presence of missionaries in the villages of Flores and Fruta Pão, along the Curuçá River. 'I know baptisms take place there,' he says. 'Their vision is to reach those who have not yet been reached. I told them to respect the uncontacted Indigenous people. I am against it.'
An Indigenous pastor, who worked with the evangelist Andrew Tonkin (who has links to New Tribes Mission) on some expeditions, said the American missionary came very close to where they live. 'He's desperate to reach them. And to do so, he carries a computer, a radio, a drone and a shotgun. He uses a plane to reach the isolated area,' says the pastor, who asked to remain anonymous.
The aircraft is a single-engined seaplane belonging to religious leader Wilson Kannenberg, according to people in Atalaia do Norte and Benjamin Constant, just outside the Javari territory.
Kannenberg did not respond to requests for comment.
On the webpage of the Frontier Missions International, which calls itself 'a Baptist free will ministry', Tonkin appears as the missionary leader. He was approached by email and decided not to comment. The page also features contributions from missionaries.
'Our heart and purpose in ministry is to reach the unreached among the indigenous peoples of the Javari Valley,' state a missionary couple in their profile. They say they 'live in a houseboat along the river's tributaries in the Amazon, preaching in the villages' in the Benjamin Constant region.
Marubo, who has a PhD in anthropology from the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro, says the concepts brought in by evangelists have destructive power. She tells the story of the Matís being asked by a visitor about the identity of their 'creator'.
'The origin of the Matís – and many other peoples – isn't explained as the work of a creator. These people originate themselves, they emerge,' she says. 'With Indigenous peoples, we have to be very careful with language, colonising language, because it is highly addictive, ends up cutting through the essence of the culture.'
Marubo says the cultural impact of white people's beliefs impoverishes the reality of Indigenous peoples. 'I fear that in future, our peoples will be like a book with a cover that's missing its contents,' she says.
Mayá, the Korubo leader who now has the In Touch Messenger audio bible, was more blunt. 'I don't want missionaries to come to our village. If they do, we will club them.'
This series on uncontacted peoples is a partnership between the Guardian and Brazilian newspaper O Globo and is supported by the Open Society Foundations, the Ford Foundation, the Pulitzer Center and the Nia Tero Foundation. Read it in Portuguese here