In the last decade, very small populations of people have been found living apart from the rest of society without any knowledge that the rest of the world even exists. A list of them are here on Wikipedia.
And here’s a short video of one of them.
A few years ago, a good friend asked me a question about this, but it was leading. He assumed that I agreed that they should be left alone to determine their own fates and develop on their own. I didn’t necessarily agree. My immediate response comes from a person who has had limited access to the opportunities and resources afforded people born better positioned. My gut reaction was that they were part of the human family. If they didn’t know that the rest of the world existed and we weren’t telling them, then we were making the decision about whether or not to be part of this world for them. We were behaving like their parents. We are not their parents. They are fully modern humans, exactly as intelligent and capable as any Denny’s cook or doctoral candidate. They can choose to do what they wish, but we can’t deny them the truth because we think it’s good for them.
The thing is, I also agreed with my friend. I didn’t want that perfect world destroyed either. All of these societies are threatened in some way. It is generally how we discovered them. If a merchant or a soldier or a politician or an activist were to walk in to have a conversation them, the encounter would undoubtedly be highly biased. Even with the best intentions, the tribe, in one way or another, would lose its freedom to decide its own future. Given the chance, it is reasonable to suppose that some significant number of them would leave for the developed world and never return. That would be as tragic as never telling them that we had been to the moon.
So here’s the question:
What does it mean to be part of the human family?
I have some thoughts but I want to hear yours.
-CG