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Cutting up the tops from Primark to wrap around us for our costume.

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Charlotte had a play around with our makeup and created this, using our inspiration from previous research into tribal make up.

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Survival. (2018) Earth's most threatened tribe [Online] Available from: https://www.survivalinternational.org/awa [Accessed 1 November 2018]

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You might imagine that a ritual held in the forest on the night of a full moon would feel sinister. Not the Awá's journey to the realm of the forest spirits: this is a family affair. As wives decorate husbands with feathers from the king vulture, using tree resin as glue, young children look on.

Later, as the grown-ups' chanting grows louder, and the men make their way to the place of the spirits, babies fall asleep in the moonlight. No drugs or alcohol are involved: chanting alone sends the men into state of trance.

Doorway to another world

During the ritual, the men leave the Earth behind as they travel to the iwa, the domain of the forest spirits. They reach this place through a doorway that takes the form of a hunting shelter, a portal between worlds. The men take turns to enter, and as they reach the iwa they encounter the souls of their ancestors and the spirits of the forest.

The hunting is always good in the iwa, for it is also home to the animals of the forest. Absent, however, are settlers-and the horses, cattle and chickens they have introduced.

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How to save Earth's most threatened tribe

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You might imagine that a ritual held in the forest on the night of a full moon would feel sinister. Not the Awá's journey to the realm of the forest spirits: this is a family affair. As wives decorate husbands with feathers from the king vulture, using tree resin as glue, young children look on.

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We had to cut the sticks down to an appropriate size once we'd bought them.
We purchased a saw and cut all five down in our car park.

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Unknown (N.D) Tribes in the Forest [Online image] Available from: https://art--evolution.blogspot.com/2016/03/ [Accessed 15 November 2018]

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Unknown (N.D) Tribal Makeup [Online image] Available from: https://ar.pinterest.com/pin/46936021102903994/ [Accessed 15 November]

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Working close to the floor in a family unit.
This is what we show at the beginning.
Unknown (N.D) Yanomami Tribe [Online image] Available from: https://www.scoopwhoop.com/What-This-South-American-Tribe-Does-To-Its-Dead-Seems-Like-A-Horror-Movie-Come-True/#.4j0k9oq1q [Accessed 15 November 2018]

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Mainly always nude, with parts of colour being either paint or clothing.
Unknown (N.D) Yanomami Tribe Men [Online image] Available from: http://mandegar.info/?l=A+Brief+Aboriginal+History++Aboriginal+Heritage+in+North [Accessed 15 November]

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Deena1313. (2005) The Jungle - Dance Starz Academy - Beyond The Stars Nationals 2014 [Online video] Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zovDARy6p0. [Accessed 29 October 2018]

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The Jungle - Dance Starz Academy - Beyond The Stars Nationals 2014

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Sticks
Circle Dance
Flex Feet
Running
Shooting Stars Dance Studios. (2014)  The Tribe - Production Competition Dance [Online video] Available From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZje8_T5hzI. [Accessed 29 October 2018

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The Tribe - Production Competition Dance (Juniors)

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We created this image of us sheltering Sally (who had just lost her stick).
Showing that even though we've lost one stick, at this point we still have enough to get by.

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Unknown (N.D) Tribal Makeup Inspiration [Online image] Available from: https://www.topsimages.com/images/dark-shaman-face-93.html [Accessed 15 November]

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This shows the physical and metaphorical border we create with our sticks through out the piece as we loose each one.
Showing that we are loosing our resources (sticks), and losing land due to deforestation, as we dance within the border we create.

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Being photographed and looking very aware.
Unknown (N.D) Tribe Being Photographed [Online image] Available from: https://www.bucksfreepress.co.uk/uk_national_entertainment/16186207.Human_Planet_set_for_editorial_review_as_BBC_admits_second_breach/ [Accessed 15 November]

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Working closely to the floor, preparing food, creating clothing etc..
This is what we show at the start of our piece.
Unknown (N.D) Tribe In The Forest [Online image] Available from: http://victorenglebertphotography.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2014-08-14T10:20:00-04:00&max-results=10&reverse-paginate=true [Accessed 15 November]

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Bulter, R. (2017) Amazon Destruction. [Online] Available from: https://rainforests.mongabay.com/amazon/amazon_destruction.html [Accessed 29 October 2018]

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Since 1978 about one million square kilometers of Amazon rainforest have been destroyed across Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Bolivia, Venezuela, Suriname, Guyana, and French Guiana. Why is Earth's largest rainforest being destroyed?

For most of human history, deforestation in the Amazon was primarily the product of subsistence farmers who cut down trees to produce crops for their families and local consumption. But in the later part of the 20th century, that began to change, with an increasing proportion of deforestation driven by industrial activities and large-scale agriculture. By the 2000s more than three-quarters of forest clearing in the Amazon was for cattle-ranching.

The result of this shift is forests in the Amazon were cleared faster than ever before in the late 1970s through the mid 2000s. Vast areas of rainforest were felled for cattle pasture and soy farms, drowned for dams, dug up for minerals, and bulldozed for towns and colonization projects. At the same time, the proliferation of roads opened previously inaccessible forests to settlement by poor farmers, illegal logging, and land speculators.

But that trend began to reverse in Brazil in 2004. Between then and the early 2010s, annual forest loss in the country that contains nearly two-thirds of the Amazon's forest cover declined by roughly eighty percent. The drop was fueled by a number of factors, including increased law enforcement, satellite monitoring, pressure from environmentalists, private and public sector initiatives, new protected areas, and macroeconomic trends. Nonetheless the trend in Brazil is not mirrored in other Amazon countries, some of which have experienced rising deforestation since 2000.

However Brazil's success in curbing deforestation has stalled since 2012 and forest loss has been trending upward since. There is debate over why this is the case, but some researchers argue that Brazil achieved about as much as it could through law enforcement and other punitive measures. Reducing deforestation further requires sufficient economic incentives to maintain forest cover in the Amazon. Put another way, standing forest needs to be made more valuable than clearing it for pasture, crops, or land speculation.

By that line of reasoning, the political impetus for reducing deforestation began to wane as ranchers, farmers, investors, and land speculators grew tried of fines, threats of legal action, and prohibitions against clearing. Political movements like the ruralistas pushed harder for relation of environmental laws and amnesty for past transgressions. These interests gained momentum when the Temer administration came to power in 2016 and won more clout with the election of Jair Bolsonaro in late 2018. Bolsonaro, who campaigned on the promise to open the Amazon to extractive industries and agribusiness while disparaging environmentalists and indigenous peoples, immediately set about dismantling protections for the Amazon when he took office in January 2019. Deforestation increased sharply thereafter, reaching levels not seen since the mid-2000s. Mongabay-News is tracking the latest deforestation news in the Amazon at its Amazon deforestation news feed.

Forest loss trends between Amazon countries are highly variable. The following charts are based data from Matt Hansen and colleagues, as presented in Global Forest Watch, using a "loose" definition of the Amazon that extends beyond the Amazon river basin. This includes the Guianas, all of Amazonas state in Venezuela, and all of the states of Maranhão and Mato Grosso in Brazil. "Forest" is defined as areas having more than 30% tree cover.

Please note: Amazon deforestation data is updated monthly here.

Brazil

Brazil [ news] holds about one-third of the world's remaining rainforests, including more than 60 percent of the Amazon rainforest. Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon declined sharply in the mid-2000s due to government interventions, macroeconomic factors, and efforts by civil society. However in recent years, that decline has stalled, with deforestation beginning to rise again.

The history of dramatic decline in the Brazilian Amazon's deforestation rate is detailed in our environmental profile on the country. For updates on deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, check our Brazil deforestation news feed.

Peru

Peru's [ news] rate of forest loss has been trending upward over the past decade. Reasons for the rise include the development and completion of the Transoceanic highway, which connects Pacific ports to the heart of the Amazon; a surge in gold mining in Madre de Dios and other regions along the eastern slope of the Andes; and increased logging and hydrocarbon extraction.

Colombia

The rate of forest loss in the Colombian Amazon [ news] has been roughly flat since 2000.

Bolivia

Bolivia's [ news] deforestation spiked in 2008 and again in 2010. Overall the country's rate of loss has been increasing at the second highest rate in the Amazon.

Ecuador

Ecuador's [ news] rate of forest loss in the Amazon increased between 2001 and 2012. One of the top concern for environmentalists is the government's decision to open Yasuni National Park for oil drilling.

Venezuela

Only a part of Amazonas state in Venezuela [ news] is considered part of the Amazon rainforest, but for the purpose of this estimate, the entire state is used. Most of Venezuela's rainforest found in areas that are part of the Orinoco river basin. Forest loss in the Venezuelan Amazon has been mostly flat since 2000.

The Guianas

While Suriname [ news], Guyana [ news], and French Guiana [ news] aren't part of the Amazon River basin, their forests are often lumped in as part of the Amazon rainforest. Forest loss in the three countries has sharply increased in recent years.

Several trends are contributing to industrial conversion in the Amazon rainforest:

Increased government incentives in the form of loans and infrastructure spending, including roads and dams;

Scaled-up private sector finance due to growing interest in "emerging markets" and rising domestic wealth;

Surging demand for commodities like beef, soy, sugar, and palm oil

Cattle ranching

Cattle ranching is the leading cause of deforestation in the Amazon rainforest. In Brazil, this has been the case since at least the 1970s: government figures attributed 38 percent of deforestation from 1966-1975 to large-scale cattle ranching. Today the figure in Brazil is closer to 70 percent. Most of the beef is destined for urban markets, whereas leather and other cattle products are primarily for export markets.

But production of beef, leather and other cattle products isn't the only reason for converting rainforest into artificial grasslands. In a region where land prices are appreciating quickly, cattle ranching is used as a vehicle for land speculation, much of which is illegal. Forestland has little value-but cleared pastureland can be used to produce cattle or sold to large-scale farmers, including soy planters.

In the mid- to late-2000s, the situation in the Brazilian Amazon began to change. In 2006, major soy crushers established the Amazon Soy Moratorium, which barred the purchase of soy produced on lands deforested in the Amazon biome after July 24, 2006. This historic agreement, which came in response to a Greenpeace campaign, became the basis for zero deforestation commitments established subsequently in other sections, including cattle production. In 2009, major cattle buyers and the Brazilian government established the "Cattle Agreement" which was intended to bar cattle from illegally deforested areas from supply chains as well as prohibit the use of slave labor on ranches. As part of the push to improve the sustainability of cattle, state-run banks began mandating landowners register their properties for environmental compliance in order to gain access to low-interest loans.

Cattle agreements did not emerge in Peru, Bolivia, and Colombia, where cattle ranching remains a major driver of Amazon forest loss. And by the early 2010s, it became clear that major slaughterhouses in Brazil were evading the safeguards put in place under the agreement by laundering cattle through other ranches. Such activity rendered the cattle agreement far less effective than originally envisioned. As of 2020, cattle ranching remains the dominant cause of deforestation in the Amazon.

Colonization and subsequent subsistence agriculture

Historically, subsistence agriculture has been an important cause of deforestation in the Amazon. Small-scale agriculture has often been facilitated by government colonization programs aiming to alleviate urban population pressure by redistributing or granting rural land to the poor. In some cases these programs have failed to meet their development goals while simultaneously unleashing large-scale deforestation.

For example, in the 1970s, Brazil's military dictatorship expanded its ambitious colonization program centered around the construction of the 2,000-mile Trans-Amazonian Highway, which would bisect the Amazon, opening rainforest lands to (1) settlement by poor farmers from the crowded, drought-plagued north and (2) enabling the exploitation of timber and mineral resources. Under the program, colonists would be granted a 250-acre lot, six-months' salary, and easy access to agricultural loans in exchange for settling along the highway and converting the surrounding rainforest into agricultural land. The plan would grow to cost Brazil US$65,000 (1980 dollars) to settle each family.

The project was plagued from the start. The sediments of the Amazon Basin rendered the highway unstable and subject to inundation during heavy rains, blocking traffic and leaving crops to rot. Harvest yields for poor farmers were dismal due to poor training and inadequate soils, which were quickly exhausted necessitating more forest clearing.. Logging was difficult due to the low density of commercially exploitable trees. Rampant erosion, up to 40 tons of soil per acre (100 tons/ha) occurred after clearing. Many colonists, unfamiliar with banking and lured by easy credit, went deep into debt.

Adding to the debacle was the environmental cost of the project. After the construction of the Trans-Amazonian Highway, Brazilian deforestation accelerated to levels never before seen.

While state-sponsored colonization schemes have waned in the 21st century, they haven't disappeared. The Instituto Nacional de Colonização e Reforma Agrária (INCRA) continues to resettle colonists in the Amazon. Additionally, actors in the private sector are known to encourage colonization for the explicit purpose of land-grabbing and deforestation. Speculators may sponsor migrants from Brazilian cities to settle forested areas in the Amazon, sometimes enroaching on farmers' legal forest reserves, indigenous reserves, and national parks and other state lands. Once the squatters - known locally as grileiros - have occupied the land long enough to clear it or secure assert a claim, however tenous, they turn it over their benefactor who sponsored the venture. The grileiros may then be deployed to another tract of forest.

Commercial agriculture

After the commercialization of a new variety of soybean developed by Brazilian scientists to flourish in rainforest climate, soy emerged as one of the most important contributors to deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon from the 1990s through the mid-2000s.

Soy was both a direct and indirect deforestation. While forest was converted directly for soy fields, the crop's impact on rainforests was much larger, providing an impetus for new highways, driving up land prices and thereby encouraging land speculation, and encouraging ranchers and small farmers to move deeper into rainforest areas.

But the situation in Brazil has changed significantly since 2006, when a high profile campaign by Greenpeace forced Brazil's largest soy producers to commit to avoiding deforestation for new production. However deforestation for soy is still widespread in Bolivia and Paraguay.

Meanwhile other forms of commercial agriculture, including rice, corn, and sugar cane, also contribute to deforestation in the Amazon, both directly through forest conversion and indirectly by driving up land values.

Logging

In theory, logging in the Amazon is controlled by strict licensing which allows timber to be harvested only in designated areas, but in practice, illegal logging remains widespread in Brazil and Peru.

Logging in the Amazon is closely linked with road building. Studies by the Environmental Defense Fund show that areas that have been selectively logged are eight times more likely to be settled and cleared by shifting cultivators than untouched rainforests because of access granted by logging roads. Logging roads give colonists access to remote rainforest areas.

Other causes of forest loss in the Amazon

Historically, hydroelectric projects have flooded vast areas of Amazon rainforest. The Balbina dam flooded some 2,400 square kilometers (920 square miles) of rainforest when it was completed. Today dams drive deforestation by powering industrial mining and farming projects. Hundreds of dams are planned in the Amazon basin over the next 20 years.

Mining has had a substantial impact in the Amazon. High mineral and precious metal prices has spurred unprecedented invasions of rainforest lands across Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia, French Guiana, Suriname, Guyana, and Peru. A 2013 study found that the area torn up for small-scale gold mining increased 400 percent in 13 years The surge in the gold price during the COVID-19 pandemic reinvigorated interested in mining, triggering more encroachment by illegal goldminers ̵ called garimpeiros in Brazil as well as increased investment from commercial and industrial operators.

Oil and gas development is fueling environmental concerns in the Western Amazon. Large blocks of rainforest have been granted for exploration and exploitation licenses in recent years. Oil and gas development is generally not a major direct driver of deforestation - most of the impact comes from the construction of supporting infrastructure like roads and pipelines. But pollution from oil spills, flaring, and intentional dumping of chemical waste drive other environmental problems.
This section is excerpted for an story published on Mongabay News: What's the current deforestation rate in the Amazon rainforest?
Nearly two-thirds of the Amazon rainforest is located in Brazil, making it the biggest component in the region's deforestation rate. Helpfully, Brazil also has the best systems for tracking deforestation, with the government and Imazon, a national civil society organization, releasing updates on a quarterly and monthly basis using MODIS satellite data, respectively. Both the Brazilian government and Imazon release more accurate data on an annual basis using higher resolution Landsat satellite imagery.

For other Amazon countries - primarily Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia since Venezuela, Suriname, Guyana and French Guiana are mostly outside the true Amazon basin watershed - the most reliable source for regular updates is Global Forest Watch, a platform that aggregates data from a many different sources. Currently Global Forest Watch has FORMA, a near-real-time forest cover monitoring system that also uses MODIS, and annual estimate made by a group of researchers led by a team at the University of Maryland.
Variance in monthly deforestation
Month-to-month deforestation is highly variable leading to frequent misreporting in the media. Both MODIS and Landsat cannot penetrate cloud cover, so during the rainy season - from roughly November to April - estimates are notoriously unreliable when compared to the same month a year earlier. Furthermore, most forest clearing in the Amazon occurs when it is dry. So if the dry season is early, deforestation may increase earlier than normal. For these reasons, the most accurate deforestation comparisons are made year-on-year. For Brazil, the deforestation "year" ends July 31: the peak of the dry season when the largest extent of forest is typically visible via satellite.

Nonetheless, short-term MODIS data isn't useless - it can provide insights on trends, especially over longer periods of time. Generally, comparing 12 consecutive months of MODIS data will provide a pretty good indication of deforestation relative to other years. Therefore the charts below include a history of MODIS-based data as well as the longer-term Landsat-based data. The MODIS system used by Brazil's National Institute for Space Research (INPE) is called DETER, while Imazon's system is called SAD. INPE's annual Landsat-based system is called PRODES.
Current monthly deforestation data for the Brazilian Amazon
INPE and DETER are used primary for law enforcement since detection occurs on roughly a biweekly basis, enabling environmental police to take action as large-scale forest clearing occurs. As of 2021, INPE releases SAD data every Friday, covering deforestation registered up to about 10 days prior.

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Since 1978 about one million square kilometers of Amazon rainforest have been destroyed across Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Bolivia, Venezuela, Suriname, Guyana, and French Guiana. Why is Earth's largest rainforest being destroyed? For most of human history, deforestation in the Amazon was primarily the product of subsistence farmers who cut down trees to produce crops for their families and local consumption.

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Eede, J . (2012) The world's most threatened tribe. The Independent[Online] 29 April. Available from: https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/the-worlds-most-threatened-tribe-7687515.html [Accessed 29 October 2018]

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On the forested western edge of Maranhao state in north-east Brazil lives the Awa tribe. One of only two nomadic hunter-gatherer tribes left in Brazil, the Awa have long lived in this area, which lies between the equatorial forests of Amazonia and the drier savannas to the east. Towards the end of the 1960s, geologists discovered that the world's richest reserves of iron ore lay under the soil, and the US, Japan, World Bank and EEC, as it was then, loaned billions of dollars to Brazil to finance the extraction, in return for exports of minerals.

The Greater Carajas Programme was devastating for the environment and its indigenous peoples. It was a mammoth agro-industrial complex, consisting of a dam, tarmac roads, aluminium smelters using timber from the forest, cattle ranches, and a 560-mile long railway that cut through the Awa's territory on its way to the coast. At its heart was an open-air iron mine so big it could be seen from space. And into this region of precious bio- and cultural diversity poured an army of ranchers, settlers and loggers, for there was a fortune to be made from the forest.

But there was a major problem for the prospectors: the Awa were in the way. So the invaders started to massacre them. Some were particularly inventive in their killings: several Awa died after eating flour laced with ant killer, a "gift" from a local farmer. Others were just shot where they stood - at home, in front of their families.

Karapiru, a gentle, tall man, thought he was the only one of his family to survive an attack. The killers murdered his wife, daughter, mother, brothers and sisters; his son was wounded and captured. Karapiru escaped and, severely traumatised, fled far into the forest, lead shot embedded in his lower back.

For 12 years, Karapiru was on the run, fleeing the invaders. He walked for nearly 400 miles across the forests and plains of Maranhao, crossing the sand dunes and rivers that flow into the Atlantic Ocean. He was terrified, hungry and alone. He survived by eating honey and small birds such as parakeets, doves and red-bellied thrushes. At night, when howler monkeys called from the canopy, he slept high in the boughs of vast copaiba trees. When the solitude became too much, he would talk quietly to himself, or hum as he walked.

More than a decade later, on the outskirts of a town in the neighbouring state of Bahia, Karapiru was seen by a farmer walking through the black ash of a burnt patch of forest, carrying a machete, arrows, and a chunk of smoked wild pig. The farmer gave him shelter, and alerted the National Indian Foundation (Funai) - the government body responsible for Indian policy - which, in turn, sent a young Awa man called Tiramucum to talk to this "unknown" Indian, whose language no one could understand. The meeting was one Karapiru could never have imagined during his 12 years on the run: the young man was his son.

Karapiru has since remarried, has a young daughter and lives in the Awa village of Tiracambu. His life since his return has been typical of the 360 members of the Awa tribe. They spend their days hunting for game such as peccary, tapir and monkey, with 6ft bows made from the irapa tree and gathering forest produce such as babacu nuts and acai berries. Vultures, bats and the three-toed sloth are forbidden as prey for eating. They nurture orphaned animals as pets, share their hammocks with raccoon-like coatis and split mangoes with green parakeets. Awa women even breast-feed capuchin and howler monkeys and have also been known to suckle small pigs.

At night, the Awa travel with torches made from tree resin, carrying the embers of a fire as they move from one hunting ground to another. And when the moon is full, the men - hair speckled white with king vulture down - in a chant-induced trance - commune with forest spirits, during a sacred ritual lasting till dawn. Their existence is one of intimate connection with the forest, which provides food, shelter and spiritual solace.

But Karapiru's way of life, and that of all Awa members, including the 60 to 100 who are still uncontacted, is once more in danger. A federal judge has described the situation as a "real genocide". Survival International has now launched a campaign to protect their lives and lands, with the backing of the actor Colin Firth.

Survival has recently discovered that Awa forests are now disappearing faster than in any other Indian area in the Brazilian Amazon. "Satellite images reveal that over 30 per cent of one territory has already been destroyed, despite the land having been legally recognised," says Fiona Watson. Heavily armed ranchers and loggers, with the grisly help of hired guns, are shooting the Awa on sight. And the Carajas train passes just metres from the forest where uncontacted Awa live.

Despite surviving violence and disease over the past two centuries, the Awa will not survive if they lose their homeland. "The loggers are destroying all the land," Pire'i Ma'a, an Awa man, said. "Monkeys, peccaries and tapir are running away. Everything is dying. We are all going to go hungry."

Their disappearance is not inevitable. Their lands need to be protected and their rights respected. In Survival's campaign film, Colin Firth says: "One man can stop this: Brazil's Minister of Justice. He can send in the federal police to catch the loggers, and keep them out for good. But we need enough people to message him. This is our chance, right now, to actually do something. And if enough people show they care, it will work."
To save this planet's most threatened tribe, please visit: survivalinternational.org/awa Joanna Eede is editorial consultant to Survival Internationa and author of 'We Are One: A Celebration of Tribal Peoples'

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On the forested western edge of Maranhao state in north-east Brazil lives the Awa tribe. One of only two nomadic hunter-gatherer tribes left in Brazil, the Awa have long lived in this area, which lies between the equatorial forests of Amazonia and the drier savannas to the east.

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Chamberlain, G. (2012) 'They're killing us': world's most endangered tribe cries for help. The Guardian [Online] 22 April. Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/apr/22/brazil-rainforest-awa-endangered-tribe [Accessed 30 October 2018]

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Trundling along the dirt roads of the Amazon, the giant logging lorry dwarfed the vehicle of the investigators following it. The trunks of nine huge trees were piled high on the back - incontrovertible proof of the continuing destruction of the world's greatest rainforest and its most endangered tribe, the Awá.

Trundling along the dirt roads of the Amazon, the giant logging lorry dwarfed the vehicle of the investigators following it. The trunks of nine huge trees were piled high on the back - incontrovertible proof of the continuing destruction of the world's greatest rainforest and its most endangered tribe, the Awá.

Yet as they travelled through the jungle early this year, the small team from Funai - Brazil's National Indian Foundation - did not dare try to stop the loggers; the vehicle was too large and the loggers were almost certainly armed. All they could do was video the lorry and add the film to the growing mountain of evidence showing how the Awá - with only 355 surviving members, more than 100 of whom have had no contact with the outside world - are teetering on the edge of extinction.

It is a scene played out throughout the Amazon as the authorities struggle to tackle the powerful illegal logging industry. But it is not just the loss of the trees that has created a situation so serious that it led a Brazilian judge, José Carlos do Vale Madeira, to describe it as "a real genocide". People are pouring on to the Awá's land, building illegal settlements, running cattle ranches. Hired gunmen - known as pistoleros - are reported to be hunting Awá who have stood in the way of land-grabbers. Members of the tribe describe seeing their families wiped out. Human rights campaigners say the tribe has reached a tipping point and only immediate action by the Brazilian government to prevent logging can save the tribe.

This week Survival International will launch a new campaign to highlight the plight of the Awá, backed by Oscar-winning actor Colin Firth. In a video to be launched on Wednesday, Firth will ask the Brazilian government to take urgent action to protect the tribe. The 51-year-old, who starred in last year's hit movie The King's Speech, and came to prominence playing Mr Darcy in the 1995 BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, delivers an appeal to camera calling on Brazil's minister of justice to send in police to drive out the loggers.

The Awá are one of only two nomadic hunter-gathering tribes left in the Amazon. According to Survival, they are now the world's most threatened tribe, assailed by gunmen, loggers and hostile settler farmers.

Their troubles began in earnest in 1982 with the inauguration of a European Economic Community (EEC) and World Bank-funded programme to extract massive iron ore deposits found in the Carajás mountains. The EEC gave Brazil $600m to build a railway from the mines to the coast, on condition that Europe received a third of the output, a minimum of 13.6m tons a year for 15 years. The railway cut directly through the Awá's land and with the railway came settlers. A road-building programme quickly followed, opening up the Awá's jungle home to loggers, who moved in from the east.

It was, according to Survival's research director, Fiona Watson, a recipe for disaster. A third of the rainforest in the Awá territory in Maranhão state in north-east Brazil has since been destroyed and outsiders have exposed the Awá to diseases against which they have no natural immunity.

"The Awá and the uncontacted Awá are really on the brink," she said. "It is an extremely small population and the forces against them are massive. They are being invaded by loggers, settlers and cattle ranchers. They rely entirely on the forest. They have said to me: 'If we have no forest, we can't feed our children and we will die'."

But it appears that the Awá also face a more direct threat. Earlier this year an investigation into reports that an Awá child had been killed by loggers found that their tractors had destroyed the Awá camp.

"It is not just the destruction of the land; it is the violence," said Watson. "I have talked to Awá people who have survived massacres. I have interviewed Awá who have seen their families shot in front of them. There are immensely powerful people against them. The land-grabbers use pistoleros to clear the land. If this is not stopped now, these people could be wiped out. This is extinction taking place before our eyes."

What is most striking about the Funai undercover video of the loggers - apart from the sheer size of the trunks - is the absence of jungle in the surrounding landscape. Once the landscape would have been lush rainforest. Now it has been clear-felled, leaving behind just grass and scrub and only a few scattered clumps of trees.

Such is the Awá's affinity with the jungle and its inhabitants that if they find a baby animal during their hunts they take it back and raise it almost like a child, to the extent that the women will sometimes breastfeed the creature. The loss of their jungle has left them in a state of despair. "They are chopping down wood and they are going to destroy everything," said Pire'i Ma'a, a member of the tribe. "Monkeys, peccaries, tapir, they are all running away. I don't know how we are going to eat - everything is being destroyed, the whole area.

"This land is mine, it is ours. They can go away to the city, but we Indians live in the forest. They are going to kill everything. Everything is dying. We are all going to go hungry, the children will be hungry, my daughter will be hungry, and I'll be hungry too."

In an earlier interview with Survival, another member of the tribe, Karapiru, described how most of his family were killed by ranchers. "I hid in the forest and escaped from the white people. They killed my mother, my brothers and sisters and my wife," he said. "When I was shot during the massacre, I suffered a great deal because I couldn't put any medicine on my back. I couldn't see the wound: it was amazing that I escaped - it was through the Tupã [spirit]. I spent a long time in the forest, hungry and being chased by ranchers. I was always running away, on my own. I had no family to help me, to talk to. So I went deeper and deeper into the forest.

"I hope when my daughter grows up she won't face any of the difficulties I've had. I hope everything will be better for her. I hope the same things that happened to me won't happen to her."

The Survival campaign reflects growing international concern over the plight of the world's remaining indigenous tribes. Earlier this year the Observer revealed how police were colluding with tour operators in India's Andaman Islands to run human safaris into the jungle heartland of the protected Jarawa tribe. A video showing half-naked Jarawa women and girls dancing in return for food caused outrage in India and around the world. Further revelations followed, exposing human safaris in Orissa, in India, and in Peru, where tour operators are profiting from the exploitation of Amazon jungle tribes.

Meanwhile, drug traffickers are posing a threat to other Amazon tribes. Last year a previously uncontacted tribe was photographed from the air close to the Peru-Brazil border only to go missing a few months later after a gang of drug traffickers overpowered guards protecting their land.

The Brazilian embassy in London referred requests for a response to the president's Human Rights Secretariat, which did not respond. However, Brazil has recently been able to point to research that shows it has been making progress in tackling illegal logging. The country's National Institute for Space Research estimates that 6,238 sq km of rainforest was lost between 2010 and 2011, down dramatically from the 2004 peak of 27,700 sq km. The same year, Brazil pledged to cut deforestation by 80% by 2020.

The year-on-year fall last year was 11% and in March Brazil's forestry department raided and closed down 14 illegal sawmills on the borders of the Awá's land. Even so, the figures also show that two states recorded sharp rises in deforestation, and illegal logging is destroying the Awá's jungle at a faster rate than that of any other Amazon tribe.

In a statement, Survival urged the Brazilian government to give more support to Funai and to increase its efforts to shut down illegal activities in the Awá's territories. "Timing is crucial, and the timing of this is now, because while all hope is not lost an entire people are on the verge of being lost, most critically the uncontacted Awá. And we have a moral responsibility to act. EU and World Bank money has helped fund huge projects in Brazil that have exploited the Awá's land resources and made infrastructure ripe for developers."
The Survival International campaign will launch later this week at survivalinternational.org Topics

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'They're killing us': world's most endangered tribe cries for help

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Logging companies keen to exploit Brazil's rainforest have been accused by human rights organisations of using gunmen to wipe out the Awá, a tribe of just 355. Survival International, with backing from Colin Firth, is campaigning to stop what a judge referred to as 'genocide'

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This is a small part showing how much space we intend to use at the start before we've lost any sticks.
Even though the studio is small, the intention is to all run to downstage right from our positions, and travel back across the space as a clump.

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Sleep and Relaxation Music (2015) 10 Minutes of relaxing rain sounds for Meditation. Ideal for Beginners [Online video] Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbVYuPogyP0&t=8s [Accessed 14 November 2018]

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10 Minutes of relaxing rain sounds for Meditation. Ideal for Beginners

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Danheim. (2017) 1 Hour of Dark & Powerful Viking Music [Online video] Available from: https://youtu.be/igmpvrRQIkI [Accessed 14 November 2018]

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Traditional Music Channel. (2014) Native American Round Dance Music [Online video] Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txFWJbHgcMM&t=1493s [Accessed 7 November 2018]

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Wunder, Y. (2013) A Tribe Called Red - Red Riddom fear. Eastern Eagle [Online video] Available from:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXQTBKyO03U [Accessed 2 November 2018

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A Tribe Called Red - Red Riddom feat. Eastern Eagle

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Wunder, Y. (2013) A Tribe Called Red - Bread & Cheese feat. Black Bear [Online video] Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqECTR82Ua0 [ Accessed 2 November 2018]

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A Tribe Called Red - Bread & Cheese feat. Black Bear

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Taking inspiration from the stamps and movements low to the floor.
Afrodrumming. (2012) Oldest Native American drumming video ever [Online video] Available from:https://youtu.be/igmpvrRQIkI[Accessed 29 October 2018]

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Oldest Native American drumming video ever