unlucky enough to have been living their whole lives on the ground the outsiders want to steal right from under their feet.

How much money would it cost to get them to do the right thing, instead, this time?

Leave these people alone. Go away, loggers, and the assholes behind you. Stop fucking with the good people of the world.

Exploiters should just back the fuck off. These people represent a way of life that is still in harmony with their environment -a sustainable lifestyle.

I was struck by the Kawahiva women's cry of alarm "It's the enemy!" when she sees the camera, but even more by the man turning back to check it out.

What must they think? I can only imagine--maybe the same sort of things I thought when contemplating my first Mac. Culture shock. Even though I knew what a Mac was, there was a great feeling of mystery and awe, and I thought of my mother who had lived from the horse & buggy age, through the automobile/TV age, to men walking on the moon, and then to the early Mac era. What transitions!

Our transition from print to internet, often compared to the Gutenberg revolution (first multiple printing of books), is also like the Kawahiva's transition from 10,000 years ago to today. We may be in as mindboggling a transition as they may soon be in.

It's also just a sheer wonder to think that these folks are living NOW, in this age of instant (and we've just learned--quantum) communications. Imagine being so in tune with your surroundings that you can go naked and barefoot through the forest, carrying children and spears, feeling fully confident in your ability to feed yourself and your family and to make an enjoyable life of it. I also noticed the man looking up and around as he walked, in a way that the rest of us seldom do any more, acutely aware of what is above him. We generally don't do that unless something intrudes upon our rushed passage from work to home, from appointment to appointment--a loud or unusual sound above us. And in our travels we are so often encased in metal--armored like beetles or turtles but with lifeless shells. Even walkers and joggers seldom look up--at the trees, at the canopy, at the sky. And our ears are no doubt dulled by much of what we hear--it's too loud and too unnatural. That man is hearing animals and birds and insects above him and around him, and the movement of branches and leaves. He's looking for dangers, no doubt. He's looking for prey. He's looking/listening for subtle signs and portents. And he's looks like he's enjoying himself--feeling the joy of being outdoors, of walking naked, of sensing everything.

All humans before us did this, to varying degrees. In only about one hundred years, most of us have lost the ability (or perhaps just the habit) of feeling our surroundings in this highly intuitive and highly intelligent way. Most of us thrash through forests and almost all natural and artificial environments with our heads down, preoccupied with what's next, not with what is.

Well, the Kawahiva likely ARE looking forward to dinner and whatever awaits them on their path, as they move between campsite and campsite or to some new campsite, the one they plan to create for the night. But it is vital to whatever plans they may have to feel and to look up. To be there, where they are.

I was older when I started hunting deer. There was no one to teach me. When I first stepped into the woods in pursuit of the deer, a part of my brain, a part that I didn't know I possessed, was activated. It's a heightened sensitivity to the surroundings. We still have this quality. It lies dormant. For most of human evolution we were hunter-gatherers, not farmers or something other. This is our more natural state.

The Yanomamo of Venezuela weren't originally from Venezuela; they went there to flee civilization and its diseases when the Amazon was discovered and exploited. More than likely these folks were agriculturalists at some time in the past in some area, settled and in one place. They are more than likely wandering the thickest forests deliberately avoiding contact as much as they possibly can, hence the cry of "Enemy!"
It's usually a mistake to think that uber-primitive hunter/gatherers were always like that. More likely for them to have been more advanced at some point in their past and to have wound up as hunter/gatherers through either accidental or enforced isolation. The human race has been around too long for people at this late stage not to have been through an agricultural, settled life at some point in their past.
Which would make bothering them again a true crime, of course. Leave them be, definitely.

cures their cancers?

I'm sure the NSA knew they were there.

But, as your post suggests, the exploiters are destroying what could be a treasure trove of botanical knowledge. They destroy the plants and the environment that supports both the plants and the knowledge of the plants. It seems like a special kind of dumb.

Must get rid of the "competition" to pharmaceutical drugs. If millions die from preventable disease ... eh, who cares? There is MONEY to be made. Not Stupid - just Evil.

Sadly I fear that climate change is going to destroy their environment in due course (20 years or so it will begin in spades, it's already happening now, slowly).