Officials: 10 Members of ‘Uncontacted’ Amazon Tribe Killed by Gold Miners in Brazil

Gold miners slaughtered ten members of an “uncontacted” Amazonian tribe along the Amazon River in Brazil, Brazilian government officials say.

Funai, Brazil’s agency on indigenous affairs, responsible for protecting the tribes, says the tribe members had been collecting eggs along the river when the miners approached them and killed them, the New York Times reports.

The miners allegedly bragged about the killings at a bar near the Colombian border and showed off a carved paddle reportedly snatched from the indigenous men.

“It was crude bar talk,” Leila Silvia Burger Sotto-Maior, Funai’s coordinator for uncontacted and recently contacted tribes, told the Times. “They even bragged about cutting up the bodies and throwing them in the river.”

Funai filed a complaint with the prosecutor’s office, prompting prosecutors to investigate the incident.

Sotto-Maior said the miners claimed the incident was a “kill” or “be killed” situation.

She added that the killings reportedly took place sometime in August, and the prosecutor for the case, Pablo Luz de Beltrand, confirmed that they took place in the Javari Valley. The valley is the second-largest indigenous reserve in Brazil.

The agency conducted a few interviews in the town before taking the case to the police.

“There is a lot of evidence, but it needs to be proven,” Sotto-Maior said.

Survival International, a global advocacy group for tribal peoples’ rights, said a large portion of the tribe’s population had likely been wiped out with these killings since many of these “uncontacted” tribes are small.

Tribes in the area have come under attack from outsiders on other occasions as well.

The Daily Mail reported that an entire tribe went missing after armed drug dealers invaded a Funai outpost. When agency workers caught the drug smugglers, they feared the tribe had been wiped out after finding a broken arrow in one of their backpacks.