Images released by Brazil’s National Indigenous Peoples Foundation offer new insight into the life of an uncontacted community living in the state of Rondônia.
The name the community has for itself – if it has one at all – is not known to the rest of the world, but the National Indigenous Peoples Foundation (Funai) has named the group the ‘Massaco’, after the river that runs through its domain.
Established near Brazil’s border with Bolivia, the Massaco is one of 28 confirmed isolated communities in Brazil, with dozens more yet to be confirmed.
The new images of the community were caught by Funai veteran Altair Algayer, who oversees the territory from a nearby base. In an effort to gain insight into the group while still avoiding contact, Algayer set up cameras in the rainforest to try and capture their movements.
Now those images, caught in 2019 and 2024, have been published for the first time in The Guardian.
In the images, members of the community can be seen carrying wooden sticks while walking naked through the trees. The community are known to be skilled hunters, using longbows to catch their prey.
Photos show Massaco members collecting tools left for them by Funai, and appearing to plant spikes in the ground with the intention of warding off unwanted visitors.
According to Algayer, he had been finding more and more of these spikes, which have the ability to take out a tractor tyre, close to his base as he sought to learn about the Massaco.
Earlier this year, the spikes damaged a vehicle being driven by a team from Funai as they carried out a mission in the Massaco Indigenous territory.
Algayer’s continued monitoring of the community has led him to believe that the population is growing, having increased from 100 to 120 people in the early 90s to approximately 200-250 today.
“On our most recent expeditions and in satellite images, we’ve seen more new tapiris [thatched huts], so I wouldn’t be surprised if there are 300 individuals,” he said, according to The Guardian.
Algayer and his team have managed to gather evidence of artefacts and create maps of the Massaco’s trails to offer insight into their lives. By learning about their movements from season to season, members of Funai are able to arrive in a location just weeks after the community has moved on.
Anthropologist Amanda Villa, who has previously joined Algayer on expeditions, spoke about the factors that make the Massaco stand out from neighboring communities.
She pointed to their tall thatched huts, longbows, extensive use of spikes, placement of animal skulls on poles, long hair, moustaches, and lack of piercings or jewellery.
The decision to try and learn about the Massaco community without making contact came after specialists from Funai determined in 1987 that attempts to connect resulted in both disease and misery for isolated groups.
