Debate over uncontacted tribe

Charity's fury over Observer report on undiscovered tribeBeaumont reported: “Far from being unknown, the tribe’s existence has been noted since 1910 and the mission to photograph them was undertaken in order to prove that ‘uncontacted’ tribes still existed in an area endangered by the menace of the logging industry.”

Survival International says that “other newspapers have picked up the article and gone further and said that the story was a ‘hoax’.”

The charity said: “neither the Brazilian government nor Survival has ever claimed that the tribe was 'undiscovered' or 'unknown'. They said only that the tribe was 'uncontacted', which was correct.”

Survival says the Observer has refused to publish a clarification.