Expedition To Monitor the Isolated Indigenous People of Mamoriá Grande

In 2021, an isolated Indigenous group was detected in the Mamoriá Grande region in southern Amazonas. This area, an extractive reserve home to 1,500 non-Indigenous riverside families, faces ongoing threats from illegal logging and predatory economic interests. Since 2021, the team from the Madeira Purus Ethno-Environmental Protection Front (FPE) has been seeking formal recognition of the Indigenous land.

The land recognition process has been initiated, but there is no information regarding the group’s language or ethnicity. There are suspicions the group may be a subgroup of the Himerimã tribe, another isolated people living nearby in an adjacent Indigenous territory.

This reporting project aims to assess invasion risks, deforestation, and threats to the survival of this nearly invisible community. Using exclusive footage, we will highlight the challenges faced by this group that lives in voluntary isolation, one among approximately 120 cases in Brazil, the country with the highest number of such occurrences worldwide.

We also seek to showcase the work of the National Indigenous People Foundation's Indigenous protection agents, often called “the Sherlock Holmes of the forest,” capable of estimating the population size—including the number of people, children, and their health status—without direct contact, merely by signs left at camps and roaming paths.