incredibly impressive. all should take note and opportunity.

a breath of fresh air

Excellent shots.

Excellent

I M going to take a machete to our planning commission meeting coming up.We dont nee a new road thru our $1,000,000 hood.

We are all one people living in one world

Thank you, wonderful shots and important information. I truly appreciate you blacking out the image of the injured Rezende, which I chose not to view.
One thing- the article says it wasn't clear exactly how Rezende was hurt, yet the photo captions say the Indians attacked him. Is that some bias, or unintended inaccuracy? I think editing needs to clear that up.
Thank you.

Regarding the attack on Rezende - sorry that was unclear. The reports were that a group of Indians angrily rushed Rezende, and somehow he ended up on the floor. When he stood up, he had been cut. It is unclear if the cut was deliberate or an accidental injury when he fell. A fine hair to split, either way.

Backward savages. Who the hell tattoos an innocent child?

And who allowed them in the meeting with weapons, that’s asking for trouble.

I think they should flood those indians out of their house and homes.

Esses "índios" são mantidos na ignorância para serem explorados por madeireiros, pela igreja e pelo governo! São bandidos que cometem crimes e não são punidos por isso!

Fighting for your right to live in peace is not "backward savage". Its human nature. You love your privacy don't you then let them have theirs. Tattoos can be a representation of a culture and societal status. It has a cultural value unlike the skulls, dragons, or whatever most of us americans have.

I say invading someone's privacy is asking for trouble.

That was not a tattoo, but a drawing done with paint,made of herbs. It is organic, don't hurt the child, and represents their status and condition in the tribe. This is called culture.
Even in an attempt to make them unculture, I do not agree with the aggression against the engineer, who was there representing the company. Aggression yes, and purposeful, the Brazilian news showed images clear, that the photographer failed to show here.
Excellent the photos, and the protection of controversy picture was very well placed, congratulations to the page.

Usually the adults are the only ones actually getting tattoos. In some cultures, tattoos indicate achievements, such as those of an experienced hunter. Kids get face paint...so relax.

A native Indian, who can kill an animal at multiple yards with a sharpened stick...doesn't simply slash...so it was probably a symbolical act. I believe that's how the Indians protest against the American-Idol-loving Brazilians who need more energy to power their TVs as not to miss out on the latest "Dancing with the Stars" episode...

Read "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" by John Perkins and discover how building hydroelectric dams destroy indigenous cultures, impoverish the local peoples and enrich only the elite, who already have enough money. This is done in the name of progress and modernization but benefits only a few. These indigenous people were right to protest and they should have been listened to. The construction of the dam would only benefit the IMF, the World Bank, prominent families in their country and of course, the CIA. America really needs to change its behavior.

I Vote Jason and Dakota off the Universe.

I'll bet Civil Monster supports tribes cutting the clitoris off little girls, binding kids feet, strapping boards to kids heads to reshape them, not educating females. Some cultural practices alive and well despite being barbaric; and the world would be better off without them. Tattooing a BABY is one of those practices. "Face paint", my butt; you are being deceived if you believe that.

Dakota--Actually, genital mutilation (only for girls) is illegal in most countries and is punishable, but you failed to mention the mutilation that goes on here in the States to roughly 58% of all male babies that are not of Jewish heritage. Clearly, you also are biased on what you consider "barbaric." While some tribal cultural "norms" are barbaric, dangerous and a violation of individual children's human rights, rushing in like a bull in a china closet and disrupting a civilization isn't the answer. Are some of you suggesting that flooding, ergo murdering an entire tribe of people for protesting is justifiable? And tattooing is definitely permanent and unlikely, with the precision shown, to be merely facepaint (I doubt very much that it is the herbal henna one can see on a hindi before her wedding). The damn will undoubtedly cause devastation to the indigenous people there. This is not the answer to the growing need for energy in this region. If a proposed project had this level of probability to cause this kind of damage here in the States, the protests would be immense!

This layout is fantastic, and moving. Nice work.

i hope and pray that the brazilian government heeds the pleas of the indigenous indians.

Amazing photos and story. Harnessing the power of water has proved useful in the US (i.e., grist mills turned wheat into flour, small dams provide reservoirs for drinking water, and in Boston -the Charles River Dam near the Museum of Science turned the smelly, muddy flats of Back Bay into the flourishing area that we know and love today). So, as an engineer I see the possibilities that a dam could provide to a civilization....however, all the potential negative impacts must be carefully weighed. Given the raw natural beauty of the Amazon shown in the photos it seems intuitive that the construction of a dam across the Xingu River will most likely cause irreversible damage to the ecosystem and unless fish ladders are installed the fish will be affected. Brazil should learn from our mistakes.

love the pictures. They are wonderful.

what else can u expect from ignorant people. can´t see past their nose.
Can´t make peace with our own natives , now u wanna bash other natives.
get your head off your butt and respect the fact that those natives r able to survive without people like "dakota", without hurting other countries and without hurting their own environment. something this society and wonderful government we all have to pay for, can´t do at all.
international interest brings local distress. It´s been always well known in southamerica that there r hundreds of tribes in the amazons, seems like now its a matter of who gets closer and gets more pictures to sell.
Focus on their governmets and the logging companies who r causing them to run away from their land.

I am with Dakota...let americanize these "savages". Once the dam is built, build a few 3000 square foot McMansions add a few Walmarts and then the usual assortment of McDonalds, Buger Kings, Taco Bells and such. Just think how much better their lives would be if they traded in their machettes for ball point pens and became CPA's, Middle mangement and retail store clerks. I am sure these "savages" just wish for the day they could stop suffering with the gifts the earth bear sand just enjoy life the way it was meant to be; sitting slack jawed in front of the TV watching reality television and stuffing their painted faces with Cheetos.

NOBODY is allowed to tell those people how they have to live!
Could I be the author of those pictures .... this would be something I´ll never forget.

Electrobras understimated the situation. The natives with their machetes
were not there to celebrate a festival, but to protect their fishing grounds from running dry with proposed Belo Monte dam.

I believe the engineer's deep slash was unintentional, otherwise he could not stand with his two feet to say "I'm OK, I'm OK".

Photos say it all!

Ravenous "White Man" on the move destroying everything in front of him...

All power to the indigenous people.

May the waters rise and the fishing be plentiful.

Am sending a coyote's howl from California. To hell with the Belo Monte dam.

I like the pic of the little boy enjoying his time with the capivara. Some have dogs, some capivaras!

THE CAPTIONS STATE THAT PAULO FERNADO REZENDE WAS
ATTACKED WITH MACHETES BY INDIANS BUT, IT SEEMS TO ME THAT
REZENDE AND THE NATIONAL ELECTRIC COMPANY OF BRAZIL MADE
THE FIRST IRREVERENT AND PRESUMPTUOUS ATTACK. MAYBE THE
INDIGENOUS PEOPLE WERE JUST SHOWING THE SAME RESPECT
THEY HAVE BEEN GIVEN. Watch " The Mission" Starring Jeremy Irons
and Robert De Niro. It will open your eyes ...It did mine. Thank you.

These pictues are absolutly amazing. They capture something no one else has before. Breathless.

wait i thought we weren't supposed to contact these savages becaus we could give them disease? why is it changed?

what?!? are we still stuck in obsolete games of one-upsmanship in who's the superior culture?!!... thought that died out w/ the
"white-privelige" bullshit of the 19h century,... for our sakes, it is the 21t century & we all have significant connections to each other by less than 2100 generations!!!... ALL OF US ARE AS CLOSE AS COUSINS WHETHER WE LIKE IT OR NOT BY MITACHONDRIAL DNA AND Y-CHROMOSOMAL EVIDENCE... grow up and live in this world not in our ignorance!!!... we pay plenty for our assumptive arrogance in the name of progress!!!

'

I'm bringing a machete to McDonalds on Sunday. That'll teach them to give me the Assistant Manager position.

We cannot hold time as we cannot hold development. Yet, we have to respect each other's right to live, to express and to choose what we deem is right and good. We just have to learn how to live in diversity - unity in diversity as many would say, but, would be better if put into practice.

Great pictures! It tells all - the pros and cons.

Wow beautiful photographs!

what on earth is that kid petting in the last picture!?

Amazing snaps Alan... it can't get better than this :)

The thing in the picture is a capybara, the World’s largest rodent, they get up to 140 pounds. Being a rodent, you can think of it as a very large RAT. In addition to keeping them as pets, they are also a source of food.

ignorant fools like dakota and jason are the reason i'm a cultural anthropologist.

viva amazonia! a luta continua!!!!

wow, dumb people have even invaded this great visual blog. it's a shame to give any airtime to some of the ignorance in the comments above. great, powerful photos once again! tells more than what words can describe.

"I'm sorry, Who's the Savage?"

Ironically the commentary that was made by people above that sounded negative and was reacted to, is actually quite NECESSARY for all of us to understand each other and move forward, especially Americans; we need to DO more than just "be aware" and "care" if future planetwide generations are to have anything other than a life filled with choas from our "western civilization technology" that has now hit developing nations, who say to us "why can't we burn all our coal night and day, or have nukes? or pollute rivers, and air? You do MrMsAmerica, and you did when you were starting out on your Utopia"... ...it's so difficult to find the steps to take to improve life on earth, help out, and it's easy to feel there's too many other people cancelling out any good deeds, but, it has to start somewhere.

And that's in a dialouge that opens minds. Please make sure, well heck, for the rest of your life, when you find something someone said to be ignorant or distastful and misinformed, that you counter it with knowledge, like many did here above, ...that you counter it with understanding and compassion to their view, because that's the ONLY way they will ever listen or change their views.... the outcome of the dialouge needs to be a common ground based in educating and compelling them, vs. informing them of how wrong they are. Each voice represents MILLIONS of other voices in a way...

The creator of this site, the photographers, have done the legwork to start the conversation; it would be a gift I'd imagine, to see that work bring about more harmony.

We are going to need to get pretty smart, and pretty fast, to survive as a species.
These photos seem to highlight situations of our species effect on the planet, and it's only the tip of the iceberg *(that's melting)......

The world population is the total number of living humans on Earth at a given time. As of May 2008, the world's population is believed to be just under 6.7 billion.

In line with population projections, this figure continues to grow at rates that were unprecedented before the 20th century, although the rate of increase has almost halved since its peak, which was reached in 1963, of 2.2 percent per year. The world's population, on its current growth trajectory, is expected to reach nearly 9 billion by the year 2042.

We're seeing data that says we won't even feel the effects of the compounded polution from the 1890's-1950's for another few years...imagine 9 billion people and the compounded effects of previous polution/impacts from technology......the people of the Amazon managed to go thru centuries without impacting people on continents away....so, I say, they are a metaphor to recognize: THEY ARE THE MODERN "US". The enginnering firm? Our desire for better faster more.

I am enthralled by the images. Thank you for sharing them.

As for the blacked out photograph...it isn't as bad as what is shown on primetime television, imho.

"Even in an attempt to make them unculture, I do not agree with the aggression against the engineer, who was there representing the company. Aggression yes, and purposeful, the Brazilian news showed images clear, that the photographer failed to show here."

I disagree. The first sign of aggression was when the engineering firm told the indians that they were going to build a dam whether they like it or not. All they are trying to do is get the indians in on it to safe face and not make them outraged. It makes no sense for "civilization" to continue to take away what little resources tribes like this need. The worst example, unfortunately, of natives being stolen from is the uUnited States. And I'm a white person saying this.

As much as I enjoy the photographs I am concerned about how easy it is to steal the images when presented this way. All you have to do is right click and save. I feel a flash based presentation would be better served to both the presentation of the photographs and to protecting the rightful ownership. Adobe's Lightroom has a flash based file creator which is easy to use and there are many others. This is not the right way to present valuable photographs. Also being able to view photos on their own one at a time is important to preserving the impact of each image. The collections of photographs are a great idea that just need to be presented better.

WE ONLY LIVE TO GIVE LIFE TO OTHERS. THIS IS A TRAGEDY. WE MUST PRAY AND GET ALL UNITED WITH LOVE AND FAITH WE WILL WIN. LOVE TO ALL. THE PICTURES WERE OUTSTANDING.

Amazing Pictures! this is not just happening in brazil , abuses on the indegineous peoples rigth to live is happening all over the world. ike here in my country the philippines. the government here is doing everything to take away the lands of the indeineous people and give to mining companies. they say its for the ecinomic development but the real score is only the pockets of the government officials are developing! the country has been in mining for more than 50 years but it has nver contributed to the development of this country ever. in fact it has contributed more to the destrcution of our environment here.

I agree with Danny. What other recourse do the indigenous people have? They have little representation or say in government, especially when compared to the state electric power company. What else can they do to make their point clear? Civil disobedience is different, since that involves discrimination against people whereas this is an attempt to destroy their way of life. It's not like they can sit where the dam is to be built constantly. I think it was an accident, and that Brazil should have stronger laws that include not only environmental but also cultural protection (I think both could be invoked in this instance).

Keep the realities of these pictures coming. Our distant worlds needs to know!

Lieve the the Xingu river alone!
Please lieve the Xingu River alone!
The earth is in a fast process of deteoration because of the many harms done by man.

#24 Bryan T! You hit the nail on the head!!

the boy and the capybera was the best...

The Indigenous people live a sustainable lifestyle. How many Americans can say they live a sustainable lifesyle? The American way of life is not sustainable, hence - global warming, pollution, drought, disease, extinct animals, rising sea levels due to ice melting, future water and food shortage and so on.
When all is said and done, then to who will to world turn too?

INDIGENOUS PEOPLES OF THE WORLD!!

referring to #9, I hope someone tries to flood your home, and not just your house, how about the entire city you live, or maybe the entire state you live in, to build a structure that will have no beneficial impact at all on your life, or the way your people live, but will actually kill off millions of species, displace thousands, cause the global ecosystem to completely change. I bet if you went to a protest with such things at stake youd like to bring a machete and take a shot at the devil that is going to ruin thousands of years of symbiotic, unadulterated existence to nature. but shit no one knows what thats like anymore.....I only wish for the day that I am able to live like that. that douche bag is lucky all he got was a slash to the arm. how people can sleep at night knowing there are not only king off basically an entire race of people, but millions of years of progression untouched by the modern human hand....... this disgust me, makes me ashamed to be part of modern society. although whome i am speaking too will never read this, or understand it, just know that after reading your coment, and reading up on this situation I am sickened to be living in a time where something like this could be happening.... I hope for all of our sakes this dam is not built. in a time where global warming and species extinction is at an all time high, a damn is being planned be constructed in the bread basket of the work.......

good

Say no to de-forestation...

I love this! The last image of the boy and the capybara touches my heart. :)

Caption on last picture wrong, it´s a capivara, not capybara.

The face is painted. The precision is quite common because of the skill of these people to paint each other, they have trained their whole lives doing it.

It is crazy of the Brazilian state to destroy the river, the forest and the whole environment just to feed some capitalist enterprises. And it is certaily a terrible crime to destroy the living conditions of people who already before have been severely opressed by "civilized" intruders into their lands. On top of that a part of the Xingu valley is a reserve, an area that was reserved for the protection of these peoples and their environment which is the base for their subsistence. It would be criminal to destroy that land that they have been promised to keep for all times (it is like in the US once a time, the indians there were also often promised to keep their lands, just to loose it after a while when land hungry settlers craved more land).

The pictures are outstanding. It is a shame that in this era we still see Christopher Columbus barbaric act. Everyone has the right to dicide to live how ever they consider good for them. Who said that building Walmart, McDonald, and Burger King is commodity for the indians? And stuffing there face with Cheetos? Let me say that they are much more healthier than many of us that live in the civilization, because we eat all the junk that McDonald and Burger King call food. Brazilians should be proud that they still have Indians, and they can still show where they came from, many races has lost thier indians. Let those people live in peace.