Grateful Blog: Day 33: I just read an article online this morning—perhaps you’ve seen it already, about an indigenous tribe that was photographed somewhere in the Amazon rainforest. It’s a bit of a sensation because they’re so infrequently seen or photographed. The article went on to mention that worldwide roughly 100 such tribes are said to exist. There’s probably some debate to be made to bring these folks into the fold of the modern world: advances in medicine perhaps. But I don’t know. My first reaction is that they represent a slice of the planet that is pre-contact, pre-Columbus, pre-Henry Ford and pre-Steve Jobs. Pre-Facebook (yes I see the irony), pre-X-Ray, X-Box and XM Satellite Radio. Just think about it—a society that potentially knows nothing of Abraham Lincoln or Adolph Hitler, Martin Luther King Jr. or Mao Se Tung. Ben Franklin or gasp—Ben Stiller (OK that’s a stretch). It boggles the mind really. Of course the contact is coming now because the developing world (logging, etc.) is encroaching on their ummm ‘habitat’. I don’t know what ‘smart’ like anthropologists and sociologists’ think of this, but in my heart of hearts I’m a hopeless romantic. This morning I’m not only Grateful that there are still roughly 100 groups or tribes of indigenous peoples around the world, I’m hoping there are more yet undiscovered. And I hoping they stay that way. They’ve seemingly gotten along fine for 10,000 years without doing a Google search on their smart phone for the nearest pizza joint, and I’m reasonably certain they can go a while longer. I’m Grateful they’re there and I hope that someday, when they’re ready, they can teach us what they know (and not the other way around). We’ve got lots to learn…
