Wired Discovers Amazonian Tribes Use GPS Tracking, Have Google-Worthy Bodies

Amazonian tribes have been using high tech devices like GPS tracking and Google Earth in an effort to reclaim and defend parts of the rainforest. And here we thought brown people just banged on rocks while yelling in order to communicate. Oh, gosh, this is just like Ferngully:

To avoid getting steamrollered by developers, ranchers, loggers, miners, oilmen, and biopirates, tribes across the Amazon Basin have begun acquiring high tech tools to defend themselves. Much of the help in this effort has come from the Amazon Conservation Team, a Virginia environmental and cultural preservation organization, which provided equipment, cartographic expertise, and financial assistance.

But do these tribes really have more of a claim to this land than loggers and miners?

Of course, just because the tribes have mapped the lands doesn’t mean they control all the legal rights to them. But it’s a step in that direction. Suriname now uses maps generated by the Trio and other groups as official government documents. In Ecuador, the Shuar tribe, long embroiled in a struggle with American oil companies, was recently granted title to its communal lands, as mapped by GPS.

That’s cool, we guess. Or completely ambiguous. But we wonder what these tribes did before they had access to this technology:

The massive sandals-on-the-ground charting campaign and delineation of once imprecise boundaries have also given the tribes greater confidence in asserting their interests — in some instances, natives have driven out illegal miners and have established settlements and guard posts on their borders.

Oh, how quaint! Tell us more about these fascinating people and their exotic, mysterious ways, please, Wired:

Wuta is practically naked, except for the red cotton breechcloth strung around his waist and the yellow beaded necklaces that drape his muscular torso. In his hands, though, he’s holding something that places him firmly in the 21st century: a new gray Garmin GPS device.

Wuta’s colorful garb and chiseled physique make him so other! We’d like to Ama-zone in on his massive sandals! Haha. Racism.

With the Help of GPS, Amazonian Tribes Reclaim the Rain Forest [Wired Magazine]