First published September 18, 2021.
Two Piripkura men, Pakyî (also called Baita) and his nephew Tamandua, photographed during an encounter with a team from Brazil's Indigenous affairs agency FUNAI. Photo: Bruno Jorge / Survival International, distributed via Reuters.
On 17 September 2021, Brazil's Indigenous affairs agency FUNAI renewed the protection order covering the Piripkura Indigenous Territory in Mato Grosso, about 242,500 hectares of Amazon rainforest, but only for six months. Since 2008 the order had been renewed for periods of up to three years. The shorter extension, granted under President Jair Bolsonaro, alarmed Indigenous rights groups, because the territory is home to the last known Piripkura men living in isolation and its protection rested entirely on these temporary orders.
The case became a symbol of a wider struggle over uncontacted peoples in Brazil: whose land the forest is, how much protection a handful of people deserve, and what happens when the legal shield around them gets thinner.
Who the Piripkura are
The Piripkura speak a Kawahib language of the Tupi family. The name means "butterfly people" and was given by the neighbouring Gavião, who saw them constantly on the move through the forest; what they call themselves is not known. Their population was once large enough to fill a village, but it collapsed in the twentieth century. Anthropologists attribute most of the deaths to violence by loggers and other outsiders during the 1980s.
Three survivors are publicly known:
- Pakyî (often called Baita), an older man who has lived in the forest most of his life.
- Tamandua, his nephew, who in 2018 needed surgery for a brain cyst in São Paulo before returning to the forest.
- Rita, Pakyî's sister, who left the group decades ago and married into the Karipuna people in neighbouring Rondônia. She is the men's main link to the outside world and helped FUNAI locate them in 1989.
The two men live as hunter-gatherers, carry fire with them and have only brief, occasional contact with FUNAI field teams. They remain the clearest proof that the territory is still inhabited, which is why their survival and the land's legal status are tied together.
Why the six-month renewal mattered
Most Indigenous territories in Brazil are protected through formal demarcation, a lengthy legal process that ends with permanent recognition. The Piripkura land never completed that process. Instead it relied on a "land use restriction ordinance", a temporary order that bars outsiders from entering while FUNAI studies the area.
When those orders lasted three years, there was time for monitoring and planning. A six-month renewal meant another decision would be due almost immediately, and each deadline was a chance for the protection to lapse. Survival International described the extension as a stay of execution, and its research director Fiona Watson said the group's future still hangs very much in the balance
as land grabbers waited to move in.
Brazil's federal prosecutors had urged FUNAI to keep the orders in place until a final decision on full recognition was made. A federal court had already ordered, in May 2021, that the territory be fully demarcated and that FUNAI keep a permanent team on site to stop illegal entry.
Deforestation and land grabbing
The Piripkura territory has suffered heavier forest loss than any other land known to be used by isolated peoples in Brazil, according to monitoring by rights groups for 2020. Satellite images and overflights showed cleared patches inside the territory, usually the first sign of illegal cattle ranching. An overflight in November 2021, only weeks after the renewal, reportedly found that more than 12,000 hectares had been destroyed in breach of the protection order.
The pattern is familiar across the southern Amazon: land is invaded, timber is taken, the forest is burned and grass is sown for cattle, and the occupiers then press for legal title. For people like Pakyî and Tamandua, who depend entirely on hunting and gathering, each cleared hectare shrinks the forest they need to survive.
Rita has spoken repeatedly about her fear that the two men could be killed, recalling a massacre in which much of her family died and from which she escaped by canoe.
Politics under Bolsonaro
Bolsonaro, who took office in January 2019, argued that Indigenous reserves were too large for the number of people living on them and favoured opening the Amazon to mining and agriculture. His government backed a bill to allow commercial mining on Indigenous lands, and promised that no new territories would be demarcated on his watch. In a widely reported remark from 1998, made as a congressman, he reportedly said Brazil's cavalry had been less "efficient" than the US cavalry, which had wiped out Indigenous peoples.
Rights groups linked that climate to bolder and more frequent invasions of Indigenous lands. Fabricio Amorim, a former FUNAI official who later worked with the Indigenous rights organisation OPI, warned that letting the order lapse would be fatal: It will be the end of the Piripkura.
Bolsonaro lost the 2022 presidential election to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who took office in January 2023 promising stronger protection of Indigenous territories. The fight over land in Mato Grosso and Rondônia, however, did not end with a change of government.
Uncontacted peoples in Brazil
Brazil is thought to have more isolated Indigenous groups than any other country. Prosecutors in 2021 spoke of 114 groups living in voluntary isolation, and a 2025 Survival International report found evidence of 124. Since 1987, FUNAI's official policy has been not to force contact, because contact has so often been catastrophic: groups without immunity to common diseases have lost most of their members within a year of meeting outsiders.
That policy depends on keeping outsiders out, which means protected land, funded field bases and working enforcement. Where any of those is missing, isolation becomes very hard to sustain.
What we know and don't know
Some popular accounts present Pakyî and Tamandua as the "last two" Piripkura. That is the best-documented picture, but it may not be complete: FUNAI teams have reported signs that others could live deeper in the forest, though this has not been confirmed. Brazil's 2022 census reportedly recorded only one Piripkura person, a reminder of how hard it is to count people who avoid contact.
What is clear is that the fate of the territory and the fate of its last known inhabitants are bound together. A documentary, Piripkura (2017), directed by Mariana Oliva, Renata Terra and Bruno Jorge, follows FUNAI agent Jair Candor on a mission to confirm the two men are still alive, a check that was needed precisely so their land could stay protected. It remains one of the best ways to understand what is at stake.
Sources: Reuters: Brazil renews protection of little-seen Amazon tribe for six months (17 September 2021); Wikipedia: Piripkura; Wikipedia: Uncontacted peoples; photo by Bruno Jorge for Survival International.
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