Brothers in arms: Members of the Amazonian Korubo tribe rejoice after years of separation // image courtesy of FUNAI, published by ladbible.com
Members of an isolated Amazonian tribe have been reunited in a landmark expedition led by a Brazilian indigenous-rights organisation.
FUNAI, a branch of the Brazilian government concerned with enacting policies to protect persecuted minorities, have brought together isolated members of the Korubo tribe, years after an internal dispute drove them apart. An epic journey traversing dense jungle within the Javari Valley, an area of the western Amazon comprised of eight million hectares, it took a team of 30 people over one month to reach the secluded Korubo tribe.
This reunion marks the first bridge of communication between FUNAI and the Korubo since their last contact with a small faction of the tribe, numbering only about 30 members, in 1996. The expedition was lead by Xuxu, a member of the Korubo who left his tribe to establish contact with FUNAI, in an attempt to settle peaceful relations between the Korubo and the Matis tribe. It was discovered during the journey that two Korubo members coming in the direction of the expedition team were actually blood brothers of a Korubo member guiding FUNAI through the Valley. This moment of discovery is what sparked the intense, euphoric reunion seen in the footage below.
Living in close proximity to one another, the atmosphere between the Matis and the Korubo had become potentially hostile after it was believed the Matis were responsible for the deaths of some Korubo members. Known as the ‘cat people,’ due to the whiskers they ceremonially attach to their faces, the Matis tribe are not the only ones to have earned an appropriate nickname. Korubo tribe members are known as ‘the clubmen,’ or ‘caceteiros,’ on account of the large clubs they carry for protection.
It was feared that such weapons would be used to deadly effect if tensions between the two tribes were to have reached breaking point. FUNAI president Franklimberg de Freitas was quoted in German newspaper Deutsche Welle as having called the peace-brokering expedition a milestone for modern indigenism, guided by respect for the rights of indigenous peoples.
If this story of brotherly love in the Amazonian rainforest has warmed your heart, then why not check out our story on a very different kind of Amazon and some of the amusing products President Trump has apparently had blacklisted.