Nukak People - Endangered People

Endangered People

The Nukak have already suffered the devastation of their population by malaria, measles and pulmonary diseases since their contact with outsiders in 1988; now, coca growers, left-wing FARC guerillas, right-wing AUC paramilitaries and the Colombian army have occupied their lands. These Indians have therefore become embroiled in Colombia's armed conflict. In 2006, a group of nearly 80 Nukak left the jungle and sought assimilation along with cultural preservation. As one of the migrants, Pia-pe put it, "We do want to join the white family, but we do not want to forget words of the Nukak." In October 2006, leader and Nukak Spanish speaker Maw-be' committed suicide by drinking poison; friends and the National Indigenous Organization of Colombia (ONIC) described him as in desperation in his inability to secure supplies or a safe return to their homeland for the Nukak.

Niall Ferguson cites them as an example of a hunter-gathering tribe which, hitherto ignorant of a money economy, has shown itself happy to exchange an arduous traditional life in their jungle homelands for a subsistence existence based on government handouts at the periphery of a globalized world of finance.