Members of the uncontacted Hongana Manyawa tribe in Indonesia have been filmed recently confronting developers who tear up their forest.

Logging and mining operations on the Indonesian island are now penetrating the rainforest of uncontacted Hongana Manyawa people.

  • livus@kbin.social
    3·
    8 months ago

    @APassenger it’s just poor reporting. Of course the contacted ones would already have been decimated back in the 1980s.

    Lack of immunity to diseases from other areas is a very common phenomenon, so there’s no reason to think this would be different.

    A quick google found me this:

    As with uncontacted tribes the world over, forced contact has proved disastrous for the Hongana Manyawa. They were immediately exposed to diseases to which they had no immunity – from the late 1970s to the early 1990s, terrible outbreaks of diseases which the Hongana Manyawa refer to as “the plague” affected the newly-settled villages, leading to widespread suffering and even death.

    “We had many different diseases when first settled, some of the sickness led to deaths, some people had fever that went on for days and nights and endless coughing for days and even weeks.” - Hongana Manyawa man

    They were nomadic and the Indonesian government relocated them. Source.