Members of an isolated tribe attack villager in Peru


In Peru, a man was shot with an arrow by members of the reclusive Mashco Piro tribe as they swept into his village in the middle of the rainforest.
The incident took place in Shipetiari, and it was the third time people from the tribe have been seen this year, the BBC reports. Anthropologists believe they were looking for food or tools, but they are not sure why they attacked the man, who was killed. There are about 600 Mashco Piro, who live in separate groups and are always on the move. Sometimes, they set up shelters along rivers and dig for turtle eggs, anthropologists say, and in southern Peru, some people feel bad for them because they are not part of the modern world, and try to coax them out of the forest with treats.
There are about a dozen indigenous tribes that have either little or no immunity to diseases, so the Peruvian government has banned physical contact with them. The government pays for specialists to mediate contact between the tribes and settled communities, the BBC says, and has sent someone to help the people of Shipetiari deal with the death in their village.
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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
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