The World Affairs Council was recently privileged to host Monte Reel, former South America Bureau Chief for the Washington Post correspondent, at the Charles Sumner School. After a number of years with the Post in South America, Washington and Iraq, this was Mr. Reel’s first foray into the literary world and he does not disappoint. The Last of the Tribe amounts to a gripping account of the discovery in 1996 of the last surviving member of an Amazon tribe. Mr. Reel summarized his book as the ‘story of the most isolated man on the planet, and the fight to keep it that way.’ In person he captivated us with his knowledge and insight into the particular problems facing a rapidly modernizing Brazil. In the words of Publishers Weekly ‘he endeavors to bring to life the ongoing struggle on the Brazilian frontier between Native Americans and land-hungry settlers.’ Demonstrating a very detailed understanding of his subject matter, and exhibiting quite the time and research he had dedicated to this project, Mr. Reel skillfully recounted the Brazilian Government’s evolving approach to its indigenous tribes. The subtitle, the ‘Epic Quest to Save a Lone Man in the Amazon’, added at his publisher’s bequest he noted, evokes the obstacles that the FUNAI (the Brazilian Government Indian protection agency) encountered in trying to contact previously un-contactable tribesmen.
For in confronting an issue that no other country has to manage on such a scale (the interaction between its tribal and societal elements), Mr. Reel documents the Brazilian authorities past experiences with indigenous peoples. Having recently made two successful first contacts with previously ‘undiscovered’ tribes, it was with a certain confidence that FUNAI sought out the lone Indian. Very soon, though, the authorities realized that their expedition had taken on the complexion of a hunt, as the tribesman fearfully sought to evade the very people who were trying to help him. Mr. Reel made it clear that his approach was rather more political than anthropological in nature and as a consequence he delves deeply into the socio-economic concerns posed by such a situation. He voiced his approval for the present FUNAI policy of no contact, formulated in the aftermath of this experience, and for the practice of maintaining reservations for these Indian peoples (the ‘last tribesman’ has a 31 square mile patch of land to himself). In the interest of balance Mr. Reel is no less effusive in his understanding for the loggers and ranchers. And it on this count that Mr. Reel has come in for much criticism for expressing overt sympathy with those who were no doubt responsible for the massacre of the rest of the Indian’s tribe. He admittedly has a point in his highlighting of the ranchers’ woes. They feel that the rules of the game have been changed in the middle of the process. They had done what the previous military governments had wanted and developed the rainforest, and now they are being punished for it. To call them the victims of the entire sordid affair, however, does the Indian a great injustice. For Mr. Reel’s book essentially amounts to not only a tale of one particular individual’s victimization, but also of an entire people left behind by Brazil’s fast-evolving modern society.