Covered in tattoos resembling jaguar spots, an Indigenous man connects to TikTok for the very first time from a previously off-the-grid village deep in the Amazon.
Covered in tattoos resembling jaguar spots, an Indigenous man connects to TikTok for the very first time from a previously off-the-grid village deep in the Amazon.
He bursts out laughing at a video entitled: «If I were rich.»
The man and other members of the Matses Indigenous group have just made a massive leap into modernity with the arrival of Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite internet.
Their village of Nova Esperanca in the Javari Valley, a settlement of some 200 people, is more than 500 kilometers (310 miles) or three days by canoe from the closest town.
But now, they are instantly connected to the outside world by a massive solar-powered antenna perched on the roof of the only school in this area of northwest Brazil, near the borders with Peru and Colombia.
The Matses are one of seven Indigenous groups in Javari, Brazil’s second-biggest Indigenous reserve, to have had contact with outsiders.
About another 19 groups remain off grid—unfound or in voluntary isolation in the area of 8.5 million hectares (21 million acres).
The Matses are a nomadic, warrior tribe, which entered into communication with the modern world in the 1970s. Today, they still hunt and fish, as well as wear facial ornaments made of bone and ivory, despite having adopted Western attire.
