The Brazilian Government’s Federal Indian Bureau decided to mount an expedition to locate the tribe, after aerial pictures showed a previously unknown village. Mr Possuelo’s brief was to survey the location of the village and discover what kind of habitat was supporting this tribe.
This all change when stories of exploitation started to surface. The expedition leader said, “We only made contact because the Indians were being exploited by the Canamaris (tribe). The team met about 30 members of the Tsohon-djapa tribe for an hour to see what could be done. However, unlike Indian Jones, Mr Possuelo did not have to resort to violence to resolve the situation.
To survey the 16-hut village and the surrounding area was the easy part, the journey to the village on the other hand was straight from the ‘Temple Of Doom’. The village itself is about 2500km northwest of Rio de Janeiro which meant the 11-man expedition, consisting of anthropologists and Indians, had to travel from Tabatinga by boat, before the arduous task of hacking their way through the rain forest.
What they found when they got there was an anthropologists dream. The village comprised of sixteen long houses and the various paraphernalia of the hunter gather tribe. What surprised the anthropologists most was the fact that small areas of forest had been cleared to grow crops. Mr Possuelo’s job was done and he was keen for himself and his team to leave the tribe in peace as soon as possible.
However there was one more surprise in store, no one knew that, “They had already had contact with our world through traded objects, but continued to live completely isolated,” said Mr Possuelo.
Just like Indiana Jones, Sydney Possuelo had got his prize but would this be his ‘Last Crusade’
