What do you think of the tribes in the rain forests should they be left alone or brought into civilization?

Question

www.chinadaily.com.cn/world/2008-05/30/c...

Answer 1

They've been living there for who knows how long, what ever happened to cultural relativity? Send a few cultural anthropologists down there to make contact. If these people want to be left alone, then that's exactly what should happen. Besides, there's a good chance exposing these people to new germs could be devastating.

I believe the Center for Indian Affairs in Brazil has been fighting for their rights.

Answer 2

I think that they should be given a chance to be brought into civilization but if they don't want to then they shouldn't be forced to

Answer 3

leave them alone...its not our business..

Answer 4

Please leave them alone as they were used to be.

Answer 5

I believe that we should offer to bring them up to speed, but also respect their cultural differences. They know its there why push it on them? Well maybe for medical technology.

Answer 6

Contact brings several problems. Disease being the greatest. The latest tibe was overflown as illegal tree cutters are advancing towards them

The 1980s film "Medicine Man" shows several of the problems connected to meetings with our civilization.

Turn the question around. Why shouldn't a tribe be contacted? Why deny them the benefits of health care, modern farming etc.? I have a teacher in college that bemoaned the impact our civilization had on the Inuit in Alaska. She used prefabricated housing, snowmachines and TV as examples of how the Inuit had been hurt. Having slept in a snow cave and ridden dogsleds, I argued that the Inuit often were quite happy to turn a key and start a snowmachine instead of literally kick started some dogs.

The teacher was quite willing to live the good life but wanted to deny it to the Inuit.

Answer 7

Introducing previously uncontacted people to the rest of the world almost always turns out badly for them.

First, these people have no immunity to most of the things we easily fight off. The common cold would very likely kill them. Second, they can't compete with the rest of the world. Tribes brought out of the forest find themselves in a position of poverty which only worsens as their members forget their traditional ways and forget how to subsist off the land like they have done for hundreds or thousands of years. They typically end up becoming exploited and then you start to see things such as HIV and syphillis appear in their community.

If these tribes are contacted in needs to be done in a way which does not seek to divert them from their ways.

Answer 8

Leave them adn their forests alone. They are more civilised than we are. They don't have pollution, violent television, nauseating video games, gambling, drugs, gangs and whatever else our so-called civilisation has given us.

They have existed in harmony with nature for thousands of years, and we should not destroy that.

Answer 9

leave them alone...It would do them no good to modernize them and make them "civilized"... it will only lower their quality of life in ways you couldn't understand.... I'm sure there are tons of anthropologists who are dying to get out there and make contact and observe them because they are one of the only cultures left not influenced by the modern world.

Answer 10

Anthropologist generally try to respect other cultures and alter them as little as possible. The only reason for doing so is for their own good, if it'll save their lives.

Their culture is not better or worse, just different. We shouldn't use our personal values to alter other cultures because we often share very different ideas of what is and isn't important and we could seriously s***w them up.