The Endangered Wisdom of Amazon Tribes | Ethnobotanist Mark Plotkin

[00:00:12]Now, I'm an ethnobotanist.

[00:00:13]That's a scientist who works in the rainforest to document how people use local plants.

[00:00:19]I've been doing this for a long time, and I want to tell you, these people know these forests and these medicinal treasures better than we do and better than we ever will.

[00:00:30]But also, these cultures, these indigenous cultures, are disappearing much faster than the forests themselves.

[00:00:39]And the greatest and most endangered species in the Amazon Rainforest is not the jaguar, it's not the harpy eagle, it's the isolated and uncontacted tribes.

[00:00:51]Now four years ago, I injured my foot in a climbing accident and I went to the doctor.

[00:00:56]She gave me heat, she gave me cold, aspirin, narcotic painkillers, anti-inflammatories, cortisone shots.

[00:01:05]It didn't work.

[00:01:07]Several months later, I was in the northeast Amazon, walked into a village, and the shaman said, "You're limping."

[00:01:16]And I'll never forget this as long as I live.

[00:01:18]He looked me in the face and he said, "Take off your shoe and give me your machete."

[00:01:24](Laughter) He walked over to a palm tree and carved off a fern, threw it in the fire, applied it to my foot, threw it in a pot of water, and had me drink the tea.

[00:01:37]The pain disappeared for seven months.

[00:01:40]When it came back, I went to see the shaman again.

[00:01:42]He gave me the same treatment, and I've been cured for three years now.

[00:01:47]Who would you rather be treated by?

[00:01:50](Applause) Now, make no mistake — Western medicine is the most successful system of healing ever devised, but there's plenty of holes in it.

[00:02:01]Where's the cure for breast cancer?

[00:02:03]Where's the cure for schizophrenia?

[00:02:05]Where's the cure for acid reflux?

[00:02:07]Where's the cure for insomnia?

[00:02:09]The fact is that these people can sometimes, sometimes, sometimes cure things we cannot.

[00:02:15]Here you see a medicine man in the northeast Amazon treating leishmaniasis, a really nasty protozoal disease that afflicts 12 million people around the world.

[00:02:24]Western treatment are injections of antimony.

[00:02:27]They're painful, they're expensive, and they're probably not good for your heart; it's a heavy metal.

[00:02:33]This man cures it with three plants from the Amazon Rainforest.

[00:02:37]This is the magic frog.

[00:02:39]My colleague, the late great Loren McIntyre, discoverer of the source lake of the Amazon, Laguna McIntyre in the Peruvian Andes, was lost on the Peru-Brazil border about 30 years ago.

[00:02:50]He was rescued by a group of isolated Indians called the Matsés.

[00:02:54]They beckoned for him to follow them into the forest, which he did.

[00:02:58]There, they took out palm leaf baskets.

[00:03:00]There, they took out these green monkey frogs — these are big suckers, they're like this — and they began licking them.

[00:03:07]It turns out, they're highly hallucinogenic.

[00:03:10]McIntyre wrote about this and it was read by the editor of High Times magazine.

[00:03:15]You see that ethnobotanists have friends in all sorts of strange cultures.

[00:03:20]This guy decided he would go down to the Amazon and give it a whirl, or give it a lick, and he did, and he wrote, "My blood pressure went through the roof, I lost full control of my bodily functions, I passed out in a heap, I woke up in a hammock six hours later, felt like God for two days."

[00:03:38](Laughter) An Italian chemist read this and said, "I'm not really interested in the theological aspects of the green monkey frog.

[00:03:45]What's this about the change in blood pressure?"

[00:03:48]Now, this is an Italian chemist who's working on a new treatment for high blood pressure based on peptides in the skin of the green monkey frog, and other scientists are looking at a cure for drug-resistant Staph aureus.

[00:04:02]How ironic if these isolated Indians and their magic frog prove to be one of the cures.

[00:04:07]Here's an ayahuasca shaman in the northwest Amazon, in the middle of a yage ceremony.

[00:04:12]I took him to Los Angeles to meet a foundation officer looking for support for monies to protect their culture.

[00:04:19]This fellow looked at the medicine man, and he said, "You didn't go to medical school, did you?"

[00:04:25]The shaman said, "No, I did not."

[00:04:27]He said, "Well, then what can you know about healing?"

[00:04:29]The shaman looked at him and he said, "You know what? If you have an infection, go to a doctor.

[00:04:35]But many human afflictions are diseases of the heart, the mind and the spirit.

[00:04:41]Western medicine can't touch those. I cure them."

[00:04:46](Applause) But all is not rosy in learning from nature about new medicines.

[00:04:54]This is a viper from Brazil, the venom of which was studied at the Universidade de São Paulo here.

[00:04:59]It was later developed into ACE inhibitors.

[00:05:03]This is a frontline treatment for hypertension.

[00:05:05]Hypertension causes over 10 percent of all deaths on the planet every day.

[00:05:10]This is a $4 billion industry based on venom from a Brazilian snake, and the Brazilians did not get a nickel.

[00:05:18]This is not an acceptable way of doing business.

[00:05:23]The rainforest has been called the greatest expression of life on Earth.

[00:05:26]There's a saying in Suriname that I dearly love: "The rainforests hold answers to questions we have yet to ask."

[00:05:34]But as you all know, it's rapidly disappearing.

[00:05:37]Here in Brazil, in the Amazon, around the world.

[00:05:41]I took this picture from a small plane flying over the eastern border of the Xingu indigenous reserve in the state of Mato Grosso to the northwest of here.

[00:05:49]The top half of the picture, you see where the Indians live.

[00:05:52]The line through the middle is the eastern border of the reserve.

[00:05:56]Top half Indians, bottom half white guys.

[00:06:00]Top half wonder drugs, bottom half just a bunch of skinny-ass cows.

[00:06:05]Top half carbon sequestered in the forest where it belongs, bottom half carbon in the atmosphere where it's driving climate change.

[00:06:14]In fact, the number two cause of carbon being released into the atmosphere is forest destruction.

[00:06:22]But in talking about destruction, it's important to keep in mind that the Amazon is the mightiest landscape of all.

[00:06:30]It's a place of beauty and wonder.

[00:06:32]The biggest anteater in the world lives in the rain forest, tips the scale at 90 pounds.

[00:06:39]The goliath bird-eating spider is the world's largest spider.

[00:06:43]It's found in the Amazon as well.

[00:06:45]The harpy eagle wingspan is over seven feet.

[00:06:49]And the black cayman — these monsters can tip the scale at over half a ton.

[00:06:55]They're known to be man-eaters.

[00:06:58]The anaconda, the largest snake, the capybara, the largest rodent.

[00:07:04]A specimen from here in Brazil tipped the scale at 201 pounds.

[00:07:09]Let's visit where these creatures live, the northeast Amazon, home to the Akuriyo tribe.

[00:07:15]Uncontacted peoples hold a mystical and iconic role in our imagination.

[00:07:23]These are the people who know nature best.

[00:07:25]These are the people who truly live in total harmony with nature.

[00:07:30]By our standards, some would dismiss these people as primitive.

[00:07:33]"They don't know how to make fire, or they didn't when they were first contacted."

[00:07:37]But they know the forest far better than we do.

[00:07:40]The Akuriyos have 35 words for honey, and other Indians look up to them as being the true masters of the emerald realm.

[00:07:49]Here you see the face of my friend Pohnay.

[00:07:52]When I was a teenager rocking out to the Rolling Stones in my hometown of New Orleans, Pohnay was a forest nomad roaming the jungles of the northeast Amazon in a small band, looking for game, looking for medicinal plants, looking for a wife, in other small nomadic bands.

[00:08:10]But it's people like these that know things that we don't, and they have lots of lessons to teach us.

[00:08:18]However, if you go into most of the forests of the Amazon, there are no indigenous peoples.

[00:08:24]This is what you find: rock carvings which indigenous peoples, uncontacted peoples, used to sharpen the edge of the stone axe.

[00:08:33]These cultures that once danced, made love, sang to the gods, worshipped the forest, all that's left is an imprint in stone, as you see here.

[00:08:43]Let's move to the western Amazon, which is really the epicenter of isolated peoples.

[00:08:49]Each of these dots represents a small, uncontacted tribe, and the big reveal today is we believe there are 14 or 15 isolated groups in the Colombian Amazon alone.

[00:09:01]Why are these people isolated?

[00:09:04]They know we exist, they know there's an outside world.

[00:09:06]This is a form of resistance.

[00:09:08]They have chosen to remain isolated, and I think it is their human right to remain so.

[00:09:14]Why are these the tribes that hide from man?

[00:09:16]Here's why.

[00:09:17]Obviously, some of this was set off in 1492.

[00:09:21]But at the turn of the last century was the rubber trade.

[00:09:25]The demand for natural rubber, which came from the Amazon, set off the botanical equivalent of a gold rush.

[00:09:31]Rubber for bicycle tires, rubber for automobile tires, rubber for zeppelins.

[00:09:37]It was a mad race to get that rubber, and the man on the left, Julio Arana, is one of the true thugs of the story.

[00:09:45]His people, his company, and other companies like them killed, massacred, tortured, butchered Indians like the Witotos you see on the right hand side of the slide.

[00:09:57]Even today, when people come out of the forest, the story seldom has a happy ending.

[00:10:02]These are Nukaks. They were contacted in the '80s.

[00:10:05]Within a year, everybody over 40 was dead.

[00:10:09]And remember, these are preliterate societies.

[00:10:12]The elders are the libraries.

[00:10:13]Every time a shaman dies, it's as if a library has burned down.

[00:10:19]They have been forced off their lands.

[00:10:21]The drug traffickers have taken over the Nukak lands, and the Nukaks live as beggars in public parks in eastern Colombia.

[00:10:30]From the Nukak lands, I want to take you to the southwest, to the most spectacular landscape in the world: Chiribiquete National Park.

[00:10:38]It was surrounded by three isolated tribes and thanks to the Colombian government and Colombian colleagues, it has now expanded.

[00:10:45]It's bigger than the state of Maryland.

[00:10:47]It is a treasure trove of botanical diversity.

[00:10:51]It was first explored botanically in 1943 by my mentor, Richard Schultes, seen here atop the Bell Mountain, the sacred mountains of the Karijonas.

[00:11:01]And let me show you what it looks like today.

[00:11:03]Flying over Chiribiquete, realize that these lost world mountains are still lost.

[00:11:07]No scientist has been atop them.

[00:11:09]In fact, nobody has been atop the Bell Mountain since Schultes in '43.

[00:11:13]And we'll end up here with the Bell Mountain just to the east of the picture.

[00:11:19]Let me show you what it looks like today.

[00:11:21]Not only is this a treasure trove of botanical diversity, not only is it home to three isolated tribes, but it's the greatest treasure trove of pre-Colombian art in the world: over 200,000 paintings.

[00:11:35]The Dutch scientist Thomas van der Hammen described this as the Sistine Chapel of the Amazon Rainforest.

[00:11:43]But move from Chiribiquete down to the southeast, again in the Colombian Amazon.

[00:11:48]Remember, the Colombian Amazon is bigger than New England.

[00:11:50]The Amazon's a big forest, and Brazil's got a big part of it, but not all of it.

[00:11:55]Moving down to these two national parks, Cahuinari and Puré in the Colombian Amazon — that's the Brazilian border to the right — it's home to several groups of isolated and uncontacted peoples.

[00:12:07]To the trained eye, you can look at the roofs of these malocas, these longhouses, and see that there's cultural diversity.

[00:12:13]These are, in fact, different tribes.

[00:12:15]As isolated as these areas are, let me show you how the outside world is crowding in.

[00:12:22]Here we see trade and transport increased in Putumayo.

[00:12:25]With the diminishment of the Civil War in Colombia, the outside world is showing up.

[00:12:30]To the north, we have illegal gold mining, also from the east, from Brazil.

[00:12:34]There's increased hunting and fishing for commercial purposes.

[00:12:38]We see illegal logging coming from the south, and drug runners are trying to move through the park and get into Brazil.

[00:12:46]This, in the past, is why you didn't mess with isolated Indians.

[00:12:50]And if it looks like this picture is out of focus because it was taken in a hurry, here's why.

[00:12:55](Laughter) This looks like — (Applause) This looks like a hangar from the Brazilian Amazon.

[00:13:06]This is an art exhibit in Havana, Cuba.

[00:13:09]A group called Los Carpinteros.

[00:13:11]This is their perception of why you shouldn't mess with uncontacted Indians.

[00:13:15]But the world is changing.

[00:13:17]These are Mashco-Piros on the Brazil-Peru border who stumbled out of the jungle because they were essentially chased out by drug runners and timber people.

[00:13:26]And in Peru, there's a very nasty business.

[00:13:29]It's called human safaris.

[00:13:31]They will take you in to isolated groups to take their picture.

[00:13:34]Of course, when you give them clothes, when you give them tools, you also give them diseases.

[00:13:39]We call these "inhuman safaris."

[00:13:42]These are Indians again on the Peru border, who were overflown by flights sponsored by missionaries.

[00:13:47]They want to get in there and turn them into Christians.

[00:13:50]We know how that turns out.

[00:13:52]What's to be done?

[00:13:54]Introduce technology to the contacted tribes, not the uncontacted tribes, in a culturally sensitive way.

[00:14:01]This is the perfect marriage of ancient shamanic wisdom and 21st century technology.

[00:14:08]We've done this now with over 30 tribes, mapped, managed and increased protection of over 70 million acres of ancestral rainforest.

[00:14:18](Applause) So this allows the Indians to take control of their environmental and cultural destiny.

[00:14:30]They also then set up guard houses to keep outsiders out.

[00:14:34]These are Indians, trained as indigenous park rangers, patrolling the borders and keeping the outside world at bay.

[00:14:41]This is a picture of actual contact.

[00:14:44]These are Chitonahua Indians on the Brazil-Peru border.

[00:14:48]They've come out of the jungle asking for help.

[00:14:52]They were shot at, their malocas, their longhouses, were burned.

[00:14:56]Some of them were massacred.

[00:14:58]Using automatic weapons to slaughter uncontacted peoples is the single most despicable and disgusting human rights abuse on our planet today, and it has to stop.

[00:15:11](Applause) But let me conclude by saying, this work can be spiritually rewarding, but it's difficult and it can be dangerous.

[00:15:26]Two colleagues of mine passed away recently in the crash of a small plane.

[00:15:31]They were serving the forest to protect those uncontacted tribes.

[00:15:36]So the question is, in conclusion, is what the future holds.

[00:15:40]These are the Uray people in Brazil.

[00:15:42]What does the future hold for them, and what does the future hold for us?

[00:15:46]Let's think differently.

[00:15:49]Let's make a better world.

[00:15:50]If the climate's going to change, let's have a climate that changes for the better rather than the worse.

[00:15:56]Let's live on a planet full of luxuriant vegetation, in which isolated peoples can remain in isolation, can maintain that mystery and that knowledge if they so choose.

[00:16:12]Let's live in a world where the shamans live in these forests and heal themselves and us with their mystical plants and their sacred frogs.

[00:16:24]Thanks again.

[00:16:26](Applause)