Extraordinary images of life within an isolated tribe in the Amazon

Five Awá families from Posto Awá, an outpost created by the Brazilian government’s indigenous affairs agency, set out on an overnight excursion into the forest. Awá like them who live in settled communities and miss the forest—especially older members who grew up there—make these forays to reconnect with their traditional ways. It wasn’t until 1987 that Brazil began its current no-contact policy for isolated indigenous groups.

At Posto Awá, villagers enjoy a morning bath. The red- and yellow-footed tortoises they’re holding will probably eventually be eaten.

A fire set by settled Awá clears manioc fields outside the government post of Juriti. They practice a mix of farming, fishing, hunting, and foraging, whereas isolated nomadic Awá live mainly by foraging and hunting.

An Awá hunter returns home with a small brocket deer. Sometimes hunters see signs of the isolados, their isolated brethren. As many as a hundred Awá still live as nomads in the Amazon forest, despite increasing pressure from illegal loggers and settlers.

When settled Awá, like these five families from Posto Awá, spend time in the forest, they shed their Western clothing so that any isolated Awá who encounter them won’t think they’re outsiders and attack them. The women make camp and watch the children, and later the men will go on a nighttime hunt with their bows and arrows.

An Awá woman cleans and butchers an armadillo in the village of Posto Awá. Today most Awá live in settled communities near government outposts where they have greater access to manufactured goods such as metal tools, guns, medicine, and even smartphones.

Awá hunters prepare to roast a porcupine while on a trek through the jungle. The Awá still derive a sense of identity from the forest, passing down traditional knowledge on family hunts.

Five-year-old Kaiau carries a baby blackbearded saki monkey on his head. The Awá hunt monkeys for their meat, and when a mother with a baby is killed, they may raise the orphan as a pet, carrying the animal around with them.

Ayrua, 39, with her pet black-bearded saki, was contacted by indigenous affairs agents in 1989. Awá at the government outposts still hunt for animals such as tapirs and peccaries, as well as various monkeys, to supplement their diet.

A Ka’apor capuchin crowns Ximirapi, 47, who left the settlement at Posto Awá in the 1990s for another at Tiracambu, drawn by the prospect of better hunting and less crowded living conditions.

Gazielly poses with her family’s pet Guianan brown capuchin. She lives in the Awá community that settled at the government outpost of Tiracambu.

Awá elders dance in a trancelike state to commune with the karawara—ancestors—and other spirits of the forest. The ceremony plays a key role in the tribe’s spiritual life, helping to safeguard traditions that are under pressure as land-hungry settlers encroach on their territory and loggers and miners steal their resources.

Members of the Guajajara tribe serve as volunteer Forest Guardians. The homegrown force is dedicated to protecting the Arariboia Indigenous Land from incessant invasions by illegal loggers— and to safeguarding several isolated Awá families who still roam the reserve.

Mile-long trains brimming with iron ore clatter past the indigenous communities of Posto Awá and Tiracambu en route from the world’s largest open-pit iron ore mine to the Atlantic port of São Luís, where the ore is loaded onto ships, many bound for China. When the railroad was built in the 1970s and ’80s, it cut through traditional Awá lands.

The Yurúa River meanders near the Peru-Brazil border. Illicit logging in the area’s protected forests feeds timber such as big-leaf mahogany to global markets. Logging also threatens the survival of the country’s estimated 15 remaining isolated tribes.

When missionaries contacted some of the Mastanahua tribe in 2003, only Shuri, his two wives, and his mother-in-law chose to end their isolation in the forest. They trade with local villagers and stay in touch with the 20 or so migratory members of their group.

Peru’s Alto Purús National Park is home to at least two isolated tribes. Without the protection granted by the park, which was created in 2004, the tribes would likely have already been forced out of their isolation by illegal timber and drug traffickers.

The city of Pucallpa, on the Ucayali River, is the hub of the logging industry in the Peruvian Amazon. Until a decade ago, global demand for mahogany was rapidly depleting the surrounding forests, the largest tracts of which are now in protected reserves.

Loggers forced contact with Candida Campos Orbe and her family in the 1990s to clear the forest of isolated groups who might interfere with their operations. She and her family now live in a house in Victoria II, a village on the Yurúa River. They’re considered to be in a stage known as initial contact, which means that they have left isolation but are far from fully assimilated.

On the Yurúa River, Gerson Mañaningo Odicio lives in the path of nomads who sometimes steal villagers’ crops and goods, like machetes and clothes. Peru doesn’t compensate for such losses, causing resentment that can spark violence against the nomads.

On a family fishing trip in 2005, the mother of Robaldo Malengama Mañaningo and Dicia Malengama Mañaningo was killed by members of the isolated Mascho-Piro tribe.

Mashco-Piro tribespeople killed Eduardo Aguilar Malengama’s wife (Robaldo and Dicia’s mother) in an attack that may have been retaliation against loggers. In revenge, his village assembled a militia and killed several members of the tribe.

In an effort to clear the forest of isolated peoples who posed a potential threat to their operations, loggers used local intermediaries to contact Rosaura Vásquez Ríos and other Chitonahua in the 1990s.

This image, taken from a plane, shows an isolated settlement in the Purús Communal Reserve. It’s believed that the huts may belong to members of the Mastanahua tribe. Neighboring indigenous communities can access the area for subsistence activities, sometimes creating conflict with isolated groups that live there.

These two Huni Kuin girls live in the remote community of Curanjillo, whose farms are occasionally raided by isolated groups. The town is located on a stream the isolated Indians use to get to the Curanja River.

The 200-person Huni Kuin community of Santa Rey has title to a large swath of communal land. The Peruvian government granted land titles to several indigenous peoples along the Curanja River in the 1990s.

Miluska Jimena Sánchez Canayo, lives in Victoria II but came upstream to the larger town of Puerto Breu, where her mom, Rosaura Vásquez Ríos, and family go to trade bush meat, bananas, and fish for items such as soap and gasoline.