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Plan My Trip. Indigenous People. Customize any aspect of your Amazon trip. Help Me Plan My Trip. The majority of this huge decline in numbers was lost due to disease — European explorers had brought with them illnesses like smallpox, measles, and the common cold that the native groups had no immunity to. Those that remained were the tribes that lived deep within the rainforest or those that were pushed there by European persecution, slavery, and warfare. Drug trafficking, logging, rubber tapping, mining, ranching, and other deforestation mean they are under mounting pressure to preserve the lands that have long been their home.
Indigenous tribes are on the front-line of those affected by the recent catastrophic fires that have ravaged their lands and livelihoods. Most native Amazonians today live in protected areas of the forest known as indigenous lands where they abide by a combination of traditional and modern means.
Some tribes have very much adapted to living near 21st-century urban conurbations, making their living through tourism, frequenting local markets for trade, selling handicrafts to tourists, and using western clothing and cooking utensils.
Sometimes these round huts can accommodate up to people! Each family has its own fire within these structures, and hammocks strung up around it. In the center, there is an area that is used for feasts and displays. Tribes normally make decisions communally, holding huge discussions where everyone is allowed a voice.
Agriculture and hunting are still crucial skills that are taught to children from an early age. Capybaras, tapirs, crocodiles, monkeys, deer, fish, and turtles are all fair game and are hunted with blowguns, poison-tipped arrows, spears, traps, and more recently guns if they can be afforded. Over the millennia, indigenous people have accumulated a wealth of expertise on how to coexist sustainably with the wild, skillfully managing the biodiversity of the forest.
Those in the varzea harvest crops like beans, bananas, wild rice, and manioc, making the most of the highly fertile soil, and rich supply of game. However, over the past years of European colonization and the modern-day destruction of the habitats surrounding their homes, many Amazonian people have had to adjust to a new way of life.
Men and women have different roles in local communities — the men have traditional hunter-gatherer roles, while the women run the household, growing crops, caring for children, and cooking. Fishing is something that the whole family contributes to! Clothing varies from tribe to tribe — the uncontacted tribes are often naked, while the tribes that engage in some way in the modern world either wear loincloths, straw skirts or sometimes even western clothing. Tribal face paint is also worn either as a sign of aggression to scare away enemies, camouflage, or sometimes for religious reasons.
Spirituality is a large part of their lives, and many tribes believe that animal spirits inhabit all things. However, over the last 20 years, sightings of tribe members have increased, reaching out to outsiders asking for food or clothing. They specialize in the manufacture of bow and arrow as a tool to hunt, which also involves detailed work and craftsmanship. Tribes within the Amazon forest have access to different areas, with different natural resources and conditions.
In both rivers and deep forest settlements, tribes live in deceptively simple houses made of bamboo and wood. Despite their protection from the foreign people, tribes also face the dangers of Mother Nature.
One small but mighty threat is mosquitos. Some defense mechanisms against these insects have become tribal symbols. Other tribes use vegetable dyes that are a natural insect repellent, to paint their bodies.
It is likely they use the same plants to make natural oils included in modern types of mosquito repellent. The Amazon is the biggest jungle and the home to a vast variety of wild food, as well as many animal species consumed by humans.
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