Brazil’s mysterious ‘man of the hole’ is dead. Should his land remain protected?

The death of Tanaru, the last member of an uncontacted group in the Amazon, raises questions about ethnic cleansing of Indigenous people, justice and the future of ancestral lands

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For at least 26 years a man known as Tanaru lived alone in a small forest in the south-western Brazilian Amazon, moving around his territory, building several houses, planting crops and hunting. He also dug large, mysterious holes inside his homes.

When a team from the National Indigenous Peoples Foundation (Funai) came across him in 1996, he resisted contact, aiming an arrow at them through a gap in his palm shelter, a scene captured in the 2009 documentary Corumbiara. In 2007, Funai officials made another attempt at contact. Again Tanaru repelled it, leaving one man with a bad arrow wound.

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