Warren Ellis » How We Carefully Observe And Protect The Last Uncontacted Tribes

How We Carefully Observe And Protect The Last Uncontacted Tribes

May 31st, 2008 | brainjuice

39 Responses to “How We Carefully Observe And Protect The Last Uncontacted Tribes”

Rachel- May 31st, 2008 at 2:18 am

You know I was bloody wondering when I read that article how exactly they’re supposed to be Uncontacted and Remote and Separate if we’re FLYING AIRPLANES OVER THEM. Seemed a bit off.

chris joseph- May 31st, 2008 at 2:45 am

I’m sure in some circles the thinking is “why should they remain so blissfully ignorant? let them suffer with the rest of us…”

Josh Hechinger- May 31st, 2008 at 3:19 am

C’mon Chris, don’t you know that “untouched” is just another way of saying “clearly need pants and Jesus”?

Glossolalia Black- May 31st, 2008 at 3:25 am

I wonder what they make of satellites, or transcontinental flights. I’m sure they’ve seen those at night. I wonder if these strange lights in the sky have made it into their stories or lexicon?

Ian- May 31st, 2008 at 5:22 am

They probably just think they are more stars.

jamses puckett- May 31st, 2008 at 5:40 am

Why do I have the feeling that in about six months the big log in the upper left will be part of an expensive coffee table?

Anyone taking bets on how long before someone has combined Google Earth and Mechanical Turk to locate the homes of the last 100 uncontacted tries?

acacia- May 31st, 2008 at 5:58 am

Meh. They’re just people.

Warren- May 31st, 2008 at 8:02 am

I’d be surprised if that was the first airplane they’d ever seen do a low pass. It was probably just the first one with a photographer aboard.

No one, anywhere on Earth today, is truly remote. It’s just a question of degree.

Looked at from another way, I don’t know if I’m comfortable with the idea of keeping several tens of dozens of tribes in something like a Wild Animal Safari zoo park. Does it satisfy us to think there are still more or less untouched-by-Western-hands cultures out there, or do we find it quaint that there are still little patches of the wild that we’re content to leave (ostensibly) untouched?

Are we preserving a culture, or are we being paternalistic shits a la Britain and India circa the 19th Century?

Jeff Britt- May 31st, 2008 at 8:32 am

Could be a bunch of spoiled rich kids who branched off into an extremist sect of the Society for Creative Anachronism.

Stig- May 31st, 2008 at 10:16 am

Warren – Isn’t this the stone age tribe that lives on an isolated island and kills whoever tries to make contact with them? Not to parse words, but we aren’t keeping those fuckers at all, hence the dead fishermen and camera crews.

I think it’s the regions that enable these tribes to exist. At last check the only modern day stone age men I know of all live on African islands, isolated and desolate African deserts, and a smattering of islands in the south pacific. All places where the government is either too weak or too remote to challenge what have got to be deeply ingrained, ritual-laden cultures.

Also, consider that these deeply ingrained, ritual-laden, terribly xenophobic, war-like cave men generally aren’t interested in our pale-faced magics… how exactly do we introduce them to the monoculture? A lot of these tribes (like the one pictured) have and will murder anyone who threatens their territory just on principle. Short of doing something reprehensible, like murdering all the adults and giving the children to missionaries, there’s no way to even pantomime to these people.

Paternalistic shittiness can’t really apply to them, is my point. That kind of mentality only works on places we’ve already bludgeoned a bit, like those Kenyan tribes that allow you to laugh and snort at a sacred consecration ritual for $60. That’s us being paternalistic shits.

Stig- May 31st, 2008 at 10:25 am

Stupid me, I forgot rainforest tribes and all those really awesome, hostile cave men in the bay of bengal.

helloMuller- May 31st, 2008 at 11:01 am

I think there was one photo where you could clearly make out that one of the red guys was wearing Nike trainers…

Warren Ellis- May 31st, 2008 at 11:34 am

“Warren – Isn’t this the stone age tribe that lives on an isolated island and kills whoever tries to make contact with them?”

No. Hence, “uncontacted.” Nobody here reads the news?

David- May 31st, 2008 at 11:59 am

What, youre surprised by that now?
And by that your audience just likes you angry and swearing, and just get a tenth of what you say too probably. Again..
What is it? A Cycle of some kind ;)

If so, Id like Cult Leader Warren back soon, I liked him.

Fred B- May 31st, 2008 at 12:00 pm

I thought we developed things like, I dunno, satellites and Google Earth to be more subtle about this stuff. But no, why use a scalpel when you’ve got a nice shiny machete handy?

Kontakt - eller ei « Steinskogs Weblog- May 31st, 2008 at 1:46 pm

[...] slik sett én mulig versjon av overgrep mot denne stammen (slik jeg også leser Warren Ellis’ bloggpost om det). Hvordan er det overhodet mulig å diskutere hvordan stammen skal kunne beskyttes når [...]

Jimy Valon- May 31st, 2008 at 3:09 pm

That’s exactly what I was thinking because they’re clearly freaked out by the bloody plain.

Pete- May 31st, 2008 at 5:22 pm

They may be uncontacted but I bet they could guess who is on the cover of Oprah Magazine this month.

The thing I find most frustrating about the “story” – and I read it on CNN.com, is how little was reported. It was basically a flyover with pictures. What the paparazzi do to the Paris Hiltons and Lindsay Lohans of the world can now be done to the uncontacted people in the Amazon. Whiz by – take a picture – and then show the world a novelty. There’s no substance. No story. No discussion. (At least not in the initial article).

Steven Kaye- May 31st, 2008 at 6:02 pm

“Are we preserving a culture, or are we being paternalistic shits a la Britain and India circa the 19th Century?”

Considering that it’s routine for tribes to get slaughtered next door in Peru anytime someone wants to get their clear-cutting on, I don’t think Brazil (which is not “we”) is being paternalistic.

W. Savant- May 31st, 2008 at 6:12 pm

Reminds me of Casanova…

Christian Otholm- May 31st, 2008 at 7:28 pm

WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF TOMORROOOOOOOW.

I guess it’s pretty sick, that I kind of want experiement on their culture, huh? Like only introducing certain things from our mass-culture, but not all.

Mithras- May 31st, 2008 at 8:34 pm

If so, Id like Cult Leader Warren back soon, I liked him.

Is that the one with kung-fu grip?

Captain Black- May 31st, 2008 at 8:55 pm

I have money riding on this being a hoax perpetrated by Tango as part of their new advertising campaign. I’m sure you’ve all seen this but it is a masterpiece. Those that haven’t, please wait for the punchline.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2aRDacKANs

RMC- May 31st, 2008 at 9:24 pm

Gotta say, my favourite thing about this image is; (from left to right) MAN RED, MAN BLUE, MAN YELLOW, MAN BROWN-ISH, MAN RED-AGAIN were building a low-slung thatched silo together one day when…

John Mortell’s blog » Blog Archive » This I like:- May 31st, 2008 at 11:06 pm

[...] Via Warren Ellis [...]

Stig- June 1st, 2008 at 2:13 am

Warren – We’re going to have to argue the meaning of uncontacted, then. The Sentinelese are considered uncontacted and India’s tried just about everything to ass its way onto their island.

World’s First LolZon? | The Duff Wire- June 1st, 2008 at 5:27 am

[...] Link via skreidle [...]

Arsen Fox- June 1st, 2008 at 11:14 am

“I told you not to touch the f#€*# monolith!”

Final- June 1st, 2008 at 6:54 pm

This is what we must look like to the aliens. Now I know why they keep buzzing by our little F-14s and do their little light shows over our metropolises.
They’re just selling pictures and stories to the more enlightened half of galaxy.

Chupacabra- June 2nd, 2008 at 2:03 pm

Jesus loves the little children… all the children of the world. YELLOW, RED AND BLACK AND WHITE…

Man… let’s get some ass-kicking missionaries with lice and gonorrhea in there asap!

Otros puntos de vista sobre la tribu desconocida de la Amazona | Blog Santo Domingo- June 2nd, 2008 at 3:06 pm

[...] Visto en WarrenEllis.com. [...]

Tryph or Gekko- June 2nd, 2008 at 4:57 pm

I found that:
http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/weblog/permalink/uncontacted_brazilian_tribe/
We read an interesting story about a true then false then true tribe made their way to the public knoledge.

Windows Vista News » Comment on How We Carefully Observe And Protect The Last …- June 2nd, 2008 at 5:06 pm

[...] post by Otros puntos de vista sobre la tribu desconocida de la Amazona | Blog Santo Domingo Related ArticlesVista XP Deluxe IconsWindows 7: No New Kernel, Builds on VistaPaying For [...]

Warren- June 2nd, 2008 at 7:43 pm

Wow, Stig, you sure are angry about a lot of people you haven’t met — and they weren’t even the right people in the first place.

I understand why we’d want to think twice (or more!) about introducing any remote civilization to a monocultured world. For one thing, they might simply decide not to participate, which might make the whole thing a waste of everyone’s time.

On the other hand, your apparent willingness to tar (with an extremely broad brush, one off by at least an ocean) anyone not in that monoculture as murderous savages suggests that maybe the Brazilian government has the right idea in keeping us the hell away from them.

john i- June 2nd, 2008 at 8:06 pm

The book “1491″ makes the case that some of these lost tribes of the Amazon may in fact be formerly quite civilized refugees from the conquistador era, who fled from the cities that Pizarro and his ilk found and destroyed, into the rain forest to escape disease, slaughter, and learning Spanish. They may indeed have had prior contact some 25 generations ago.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1491:_New_Revelations_of_the_Americas_Before_Columbus

Templesmith- June 2nd, 2008 at 11:20 pm

I hate to say it, but to me that looks like a giant erect penis shaft.

Yes, off I go now to question my own sexuality.

Tryph or gekko- June 3rd, 2008 at 4:56 pm

Templesmith
It would be cowardly from me to pretend I did’nt have that very same vision, (yet Iinstantly tried to think of something else)Probably the F word in the title had something subliminal to that.

Scott- June 3rd, 2008 at 11:49 pm

I bet they are marrying off their children before the legal age.

I bet they are harming their children in other ways too, like teaching them to kill and torture animals — and enemies– and indoctrinating them with strange religious ideas.

We should invade them and take all of their children away.

Felipe- June 5th, 2008 at 12:15 am

I did not follow how this news as presented in the english-speaking bit of the world… But by your overall reactions I think there was a little tid bit of misinformation and exoticism.

So, to clarify:

“Uncontacted” does not mean this people have never saw a plane, does not know what an helicopter is or lose their nights fearfully musing about the mysterious nature of the pale-faced weredevils from above. “Uncontacted” just means they don´t have contact with us (and I am brazilian, so it is “us” to me). This people do know about white men and their technology and civilization… they just couldn´t care less. In fact, brazilian was able to locate them to take this pictures thanks to other tribes (of the “contacted” persuasion) who eventually trade with them… including itens from our post-industrial world, like matches.

Therefore this is not a picture of poor stone-aged people cowering at the sight of the Sky Metal God. It´s a picture of natives saying “It´s a fucking helicopter from the white invaders. Let´s show them they´re not welcome. With lethal prejudice.”

And that´s, by the way, why they remain uncontacted.

postfix, spamassassin, dovecot and sieve?

jwz - 30 Jul 10

Dear Lazyweb, how do I use both SpamAssassin and Sieve at the same time?

Is the way this works that Postfix writes /var/mail/jwz via procmail, and then dovecot reads from there and moves the messages to ~/mail/ via sieve? I can't even tell.

Postfix main.cf has mailbox_command = /usr/bin/procmail.

/etc/procmailrc is:

DROPPRIVS=yes
:0fw
| /usr/bin/spamc -u $LOGNAME -x -s 100000000

/var/mail/jwz gets X-Spam-Status headers written into it. So far so good.

/etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf (for dovecot 2.0) has:

protocol lda { ... mail_plugins = sieve ... }

Dovecot is managing to read messages out of /var/mail/jwz and deliver them to me over IMAP, with SA headers intact. But it's not running sieve, possibly not even running its own lda, and everything I have googled so far is a twisty maze of illiterate wikis that may or may not be written for versions of the software that is 5+ years out of date.

I thought maybe the answer was to add
| /usr/libexec/dovecot/deliver -d $LOGNAME
to the end of procmailrc, but that let me to discover that:

% cat testmsg | /usr/libexec/dovecot/deliver -d jwz
Exit 75
lda: Error: dlopen(/usr/lib64/dovecot/lda/lib90_sieve_plugin.so) failed: /usr/lib64/dovecot/lda/lib90_sieve_plugin.so: undefined symbol: tried_default_save
lda: Fatal: Couldn't load required plugins

So I guess I have the wrong version of the sieve plugin? I have: dovecot-2.0-0.18_114_rc3.el5 and dovecot-sieve-0.1.17-5.el5 on CentOS release 5.4 (Final)

Grasshopper Podcast Appearance

I mentioned last week that I’d be a guest this week on game developer Grasshopper Manufacture’s podcast (Flower, Sun, & Podcast), and the episode (5) is now up and you can download it here (it should be on iTunes too). Check it out if you want to hear me ramble (and ramble) about mostly game-related topics.

Pictured, the Grasshopper conference room — complete with ping-pong table — where we recorded the episode. Big thanks to Grasshopper producer Esteban Salazar for inviting me on the show.

Thor 612 & Spider-man Vs Thor 2 Out

Catching up a little with stuff that happened when I’m away. I’ll talk Generation Hope later, but here’s the two comics I’ve got out this week.

My Thor In Hell and Hel arc continues. Here’s the five-page-preview. Enormous metal seriousness. My dual influences remain I, Claudius and the cover of 1980s Metal albums. Assorted random reviews: IGN. A Comic Book Blog. Weekly Comic Book Review.

The concluding party of my two part character-study/fight-comic. Preview here. And no reviews which I can find, but pleased to see that at least some people thought it was funny. Few things make me worry more than writing comedy.

Oh - here’s Seb’s review of the first one, which will give you a taste for it.

Vintage Jantzen: The Pin-Up Powerhouse

So… any Mad Men fans in the ‘haus? No spoilers in the comments, please, because I’m not sure if Mer and Zo have had a chance to catch last Sunday’s Season 4 premiere. But without giving away any plot points, I just want to ask: what was up with Don Draper pulling a Dov Charney with his horrible Jantzen pitch? Our colleague Copyranter eats this kind of American Apparel shit for breakfast. The Portland-based swimwear company was portrayed as a stodgy, conservative business to whom Draper declares angrily, “you’re too scared of the skin your two-piece was designed to show off.” I guess he (and/or the show’s writers) never saw Jantzen’s Vargas-inspired campaign, which ran in LIFE in 1947 (below). Dear readers, I proudly tag this post “Stroke Material” and present you with my stash of vintage Jantzen advertisements from the 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s. Sun-kissed beauties with Bettie Page smiles and space-age swimsuits – as well as a few clever parodies – after the jump.

Read the rest of Vintage Jantzen: The Pin-Up Powerhouse

Post tags: Advertising, Fashion, Stroke Material, Ye Olde

Deep Rivers Run Quiet: Ryan Francesconi?s ?Parables?

Photo by Ben Corrigan.

Ryan Francesconi‘s wonderful music has been lilting around the edges of my life since 1995 when I briefly worked together with him and Dan Cantrell in the Toids, an experimental folk group that riffed off various Eastern European idioms in tandem with Francesconi and Cantrell’s eclectic compositional styles. Back then, Francesconi was one seriously intimidating guitar/tambura/bouzouki shredder! He reveled in playing faster, smarter, better than anybody. He’s a shredder still, and no one can approximate his style… but over the years, wisdom seems to have smoothed over some of the sharper, more Malmsteinish edges of his virtuosity. Lately, the music he makes has deepened into an expression of something far more present, and pure.

Nowhere is this more apparent than on a quietly stunning record Francesconi released earlier this year, called Parables. A series of songs for solo acoustic guitar, it reflects his interest in American bluegrass, Bulgarian folk, jazz improvisation and Baroque lute music. Recorded live (no overdubs!), the music is graceful and green with nods of kinship to everyone from Nick Drake to Herman Hesse to the forests of the Pacific Northwest– which is where Francesconi lives when he’s not trotting the globe.

Speaking of– if you’re a fan of Joanna Newsom, the name Ryan Francesconi is probably already familiar to you, since he’s been one of her key players for several years, leading her live touring performers in the Ys Street Band and arranging/playing on just about every song on her new triple album, Have One On Me. They’re kicking off their summer West Coast tour of the States tonight in San Diego, California. Newsom had this to say about Parables:

“Ryan Francesconi is one of the most awe-inspiring musicians I’ve known. On “Parables,” he distills his many realms of artistry [...] into a beautifully minimalist, poetic, intricate, emotionally realized study of themes, variations, organic counterpoint, and such devastating forays into fractal-metric out-lands that it is nearly impossible to believe he’s picking those strings with just one hand. This is solo music that sounds like an ensemble, an ecstatic and measured reconciliation of West African / Balkan / Baroque / bluegrass influences, which ultimately resembles nothing I know.”

Pick up Parables on vinyl over at Drag City (they’re currently sold out of the CD), or in Mp3 format from CD Baby or iTunes.

Post tags: Events, Faboo, Music, Personal Style

Nick Cave Rewrites The Crow, Cillian Murphy to Star?

Nick Cave’s participation in the remake of the new Crow has been confirmed, and I’m finally starting to get excited. The Crow, a film based on James O’Barr’s eponymous comic book series, was a sort of holy grail to me and my darque little crew back in the early nineties. Unapologetically dramatic, The Crow had everything an angsty kid could want:� love, destruction, hot bloke in makeup, great villains, pretty girls. There was one year when I watched the film at least five times.

Now, I haven’t actually seen it in over ten years, for fear that it won’t hold up. I’m told it doesn’t. Still, the concept of a shiny new remake of my childhood/adolescence favorite is an uncomfortable one. Nostalgia and Brandon Lee’s death on the set veil The Crow in shimmery, inviolate mystery, and, had it been anyone other than Nick The Stripper doing the re-write, I would have probably shunned it. As things stand though, I think there’s reason to get at least a little fired up, especially with new rumors of Cillian Murphy possibly signing on to play Eric – almost as weird as casting Brandon Lee! If only Stephen Norrington could be replaced… Yes, then I can almost picture it. Until we know more, let us remember The Crow that once was. I leave you with a question: who would you cast as the ideal Eric?

The Crow is available on YouTube in its entirety.

Post tags: Comics, Fairy Tales, Film, Stroke Material, Surreal, Uber

Igor Oleynikov

A patchwork biography of Igor Oleynikov: Growing up in Lubertsy, Russia ? a small town outside of Moscow ? his entrance into the art world was at the Russian animation studio Soyuzmultfilm in 1979. Since 1986 he has been illustrating children’s books and has done 25 to date.

Children’s book illustration is a lot like veterinary school ? the common misconception being that medical school has a much higher barrier of entry, and yet the opposite is true. Children’s book illustration is a notoriously difficult nut to crack.

Oleynikov’s work is testament to the talent involved in the field. His paintings are lush and yet his tones are muted just enough to give everything a dream-like quality. In addition, they possess that air of danger and foreboding so often found in literature for young readers. Really, I could look at these all day. See more after the jump and even more here, here, and here.

Read the rest of Igor Oleynikov

Post tags: Animation, Art, Russia

Cthulhu Cthursday: Arkham ? shit, I?m still only in Arkham

When I found this last weekend, I watched it obsessively a number of times. It just seems right. Not exactly a vision of prophecy, but for a myth of collapse it will do?

Apocalypse -Cthulhu- Now by Cthulinos [Youtube]
Apocalypse Now intro – In case you’ve forgotten the visual pun [Youtube]

How We Carefully Observe And Protect The Last Uncontacted Tribes

39 Responses to “How We Carefully Observe And Protect The Last Uncontacted Tribes”

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