"I've come to the heart of the Amazonian rainforest to live with the Matis people." "They're highly-skilled hunters who use blowpipes to kill their prey." "To improve the chances for a successful hunt, they take part in rituals to remove their fear and laziness, improve their speed and vision... and increase their strength and endurance." "The Matis remained uncontacted until the 1970s, when loggers and prospectors moved onto their land." "This first contact proved devastating and the Matis were almost wiped out by Western diseases." "30 years on and I want to learn how the Matis have survived and how they're finding their place in a modern-day Brazil." "And I want to see if, by participating in their rituals," "I, too, can learn how to hunt with the Matis." "My name's Bruce Parry." "I've been travelling to some of the world's most remote places to see how people there live and how they're adjusting to a rapidly changing world." "I believe there's only one way to really understand another culture and that's to experience it first-hand, to become, for a short while, one of the tribe." "I'm in a border town." "Here, I'm in Brazil, and just there is Colombia." "Over there is Peru." "And the river... is the Amazon." "This is a bustling port, but just 40 miles away is one of Brazil's largest and most fiercely protected national parks." "It's normally off-limits to everyone except for the indigenous tribes who live there." "I'm off to live with a tribal community called the Matis, who are also known as the Jaguar People." "They were first contacted in the '70s." "Within a few years, Western diseases had killed a third of their population, leaving fewer than 100 Matis alive." "The journey will take several days." "We'll head upstream along a couple of wide rivers until we reach the entrance to the national park." "A very squeaky steering system at the front and at the back." "This one's breaking all the time." "We should have turned that corner but we just careered straight into the bank." "Fantastic." "That is beautiful." "We left the Amazon proper yesterday and this morning we've been travelling down this big river called the Javari." "But now, finally, we've turned on this confluence into our final river, the Itui." "Upstream, we pass several active sawmills." "Deforestation reduces the rainforest by about the size of Wales every year." "But the lands of the Matis have been protected from loggers since the national park was formed in 1996." "Permission to enter the area must be granted by" "Brazil's National Foundation for Indians, FUNAl." "We're just approaching the protected area for the indigenous peoples in this part of Brazil." "But before we go in, we have to stop off at the FUNAl post to make sure that all our permits are in order." "A major reason to restrict access to the Matis and other indigenous groups is to protect them from the spread of infectious diseases." "We're not allowed to film in there but I'm gonna go in and show them all my paperwork, my passport, but most importantly, my vaccination certificates." "Understandably, it's incredibly hard to get permission to film in here and so I'm just hoping all my paperwork's in order." "Everything seems to be fine, so the months spent setting up this trip have paid off." "I'm finally on my way." "The indigenous park is home to roughly a dozen tribal groups, only about half of which have so far been contacted." "Next on our route are the Korubo." "Unlike the Matis, they've remained almost entirely uncontacted." "Known locally as the Head-smashers, they are thought to be quite dangerous." "A FUNAl guide has joined us to prevent us filming the Korubo, which is not part of our permit." "He carries a gun." "We've passed through the Korubo area now and on two occasions I did see villagers at the side of the river, beckoning us over." "The second group all had quite big clubs and looked quite menacing, actually." "And in fact, we've been told stories that in the past, boatmen like these have been beckoned over and they've been clubbed to death and all of their possessions stolen." "It's not clear why the Korubo are so hostile towards outsiders." "But at least their hostility is buying them some time." "Another 24 hours up the river and we're approaching the lands of the Matis." "Just checking up on my greetings before we get there." "It seems the catch-all word is "Brra", which is "OK, fine, everything's cool. "" "That's the first one to learn." "But a really nice greeting, I've just heard, is "Amutsi mibupiya?" - "What have you eaten?"" "And that seems to be the general accepted greeting, as well, which is really nice, I think." "Amutsi mibupiya?" "When they say what they've eaten I won't have a clue what they're talking about, so I think I'll stick with "brra" for the first day." "Wow, what a reception." "Rarely do I get the whole village turning out." "That's really lovely." "And they all look like they're waving." "They're not waving at all." "They've just got their T-shirts and they're slapping the bugs." "All of these little sandflies." "That doesn't bode well for my time there." "Brra." "Amutsi mibupiya?" "Amutsi mibupiya?" "Ah!" "Someone understood what I was saying." "Yep." " Brra." " Brra." " Brra." " Brra." " Brra." " Brra." "Hi, everyone." "The Matis have been filmed before." "All film crews are required by FUNAl to bring in specific gifts." "We were told to bring petrol and an outboard motor." "Coming to a clearing now." "So hopefully, this is the village." "Really looking forward to seeing what it looks like." "Wow." "Just as I get acquainted with the village, my translator and I are summoned into the longhouse." "Chima, the chief, wants to discuss my visit." "My plan here, if it is OK with you, is to join one of your families, do everything you do and maybe, hopefully, I can understand a little bit what it's like to be a Matis." "This film that we are making, we want to tell the truth about your lives now and how your lives are changing and the problems that you have." "We are not going to exploit you." "We will of course pay our way." "All I can say is that I fully understand your... your comment." "And erm..." "And I do not have anything to offer you that is eternal, unfortunately, in the same way." "What we can offer you in the long term is the opportunity to use your voice in the greater world, with educating people on the outside." "I think that this will help all of our cause together." "We are on the same side." "Thank you." "Yeah." "I'm pleased the chief is letting us stay." "The Matis feel they usually get a bad deal from outsiders." "I hope by the time I leave they won't feel the same way about me." "I now feel ready for my new life as a Matis." "This is Tumi, who's kindly volunteered to be my host and this is, I believe, our house." "Or your house, should I say?" "Oh, wow." "Look at this!" "I see." "Fantastic." "Right, let me give it a go." "Ah, it's pretty solid." "That's good." "And where do you sleep?" "Which one's you?" "This one?" "OK, and your wife beneath you?" "OK." "Did you make this yourself?" "You?" "You made it?" "Really?" "All three?" "And do you have a shotgun, as well?" "You have one." "Do you think one day maybe you would show me how to go hunting with this?" "Thank you very much." "I'll never be able to do that." "You just have to have the leathery feet that they have in order to grip." "If you try it with shoes, it just isn't good enough, no matter how strong your grip." "Finding some fruit in the peach palm to yank down with these sticks." "Hoi!" "Tumi and his wife, Tupa, have four children." "Their youngest son is little Tumi." "He is five years old." "I don't think I'm strong enough." "I think your daddy is better at that than me." "It's so heavy I've got to use both my arms." "That means..." "I can't swat the sandflies." "Unlike this lot." "Yeah." "OK, let's go." "My first evening with Tumi's family reveals that I'm not the only visitor to the house." "As I swing from my hammock..." "I see multitudes... cockroaches just running around beneath me." "The Matis have a word to describe a person like me." "It's "nawa", which means "outsider"." "I hope, by living on their terms," "I'll become more than just a nawa to my hosts." "I head to the longhouse to see what's going on." "I've come in for my first meal here in the..." "longhouse." "I'm on my own, no interpretation." "There's a lot more faces kind of staring at me, curious." "But they all seem very friendly so I'm looking forward to seeing what's for lunch." "Waiwai?" "Waiwai?" "Is that my new name?" "I don't think I'm ever going to be able to talk over the camera again because they... they just like to..." "They just like to repeat what I say." " Earlier, I said "Wait, wait, wait. "" " Wait wait wait." "And now they all repeat, "Wait wait wait. "" "The great sense of camaraderie is the biggest thing." "It's just... everyone sat here together..." "really very friendly, lots of banter." "A lot of piss-taking, actually." "Lots of piss-taking..." "especially of me." " Erm, I'm on my own." " Amomyow." "The longhouse is the centre of Matis life, a place for eating, meeting and important rituals." "This morning, several hunters have the bitter juice of a special root squeezed into their eyes." "That looks really sore, judging by how much this guy's in pain." "And these guys are tough." "That didn't look pleasant at all." "Why is it that you do that?" "I'm very glad they didn't ask me to do it." "I would like to." "But I think, before I do this," "I need to learn a little bit more about hunting and these things." "And then maybe, when I've tried to hunt, then I will do this..." "later in my stay here." "If I'm going hunting with you tomorrow then I shall do it." "Of course, of course." "I wasn't expecting this that early." "I really thought I'd got out of that." "Agh!" "That is as sore as it looks." "It's like chillies just being thrown straight in your eyes." "I really did get a good dose in that eye." "Jesus, man." "I will take it slowly, slowly." "I need to learn a little bit more about Matis life and then, hopefully, I will become a better hunter while I am here and at the end I will do all four before I leave." "And so then I'll have one, final hunting trip as, hopefully, a good hunter." "They ask me to join a dance to attract peccary, a sort of wild boar, towards the village." "They cover me with red juice from the annatto fruit." "I'm very definitely an amusing alien at the moment and not one of them." "Not that I think I ever will be one of them." "As if it's not obvious enough that I look a little bit different." "There isn't half a few giggles going round." "There's a fair bit of sniggering behind my back, I think." "Yoo!" "Whoa!" "We enter the longhouse, imitating the pig-like sounds of the peccary." "We make a quick change, using more mud, and return as jungle rodents called capybara." "It's daybreak and we're off on my first hunting trip." "En route, we have a brief but rare sighting of a jaguar." "It was the facial ornaments and tattoos of the Matis that led outsiders to nickname them the Jaguar People." "But the Matis feel the term is demeaning and prefer their own name instead." "The hunt starts." "We're on the trail of a herd of peccary, a large, jungle pig." "Or at least, that's what I think we're after." "Just keeping up with this kid, who's carrying a huge shotgun..." "Totally knackering." "Jesus Christ." "Peccary... calling." "Can you hear them?" "My God, they're so close." "Sounds just like our... dance last night." "This is potentially very dangerous." "I've just been told to get down." "He's just taken his blowpipe." "I don't know why he didn't take the shotgun, but you can really hear them everywhere." "We're so close." "It sounds like there's a few." "We must just sit and wait." "Hope they don't run this way too angry." "Right, see that stump there?" "If they come, I'm getting up that." "I don't know why he took his blowpipe for peccary." "Unless it was a howler monkey, but I think he said peccary." "Is it these or is it these?" "Well... no." "It's howler monkey." "I got it wrong." "Ahh." "That's better." "Soon we're on the hunt again." "I don't know what it is, but it's gone to ground." "These guys are just blocking off one of the entrances." "Look..." "Fucking hell, man!" "That... is exciting." "Ahh!" "Jesus!" "And that, I think, is the boar." "What... a long..." "long, long day." "Just nonstop all day long." "A few hours ago I was hot, covered in insects and, er... totally dehydrated." "And now I'm soaking wet through and freezing cold." "I've had it all today." "It's been mad." "But I don't care cos I've got a boar's head on my back." "What could be better?" "Right, off to the longhouse." "And we were running, running, running and he was already over there." "And oonkin had gone into a hole... yeah?" "And so he got the sticks and sticks and putting them into the... into the ground, in this hole." "Yeah?" "Sticks, sticks, sticks." "And I came..." "Bit late." "And then I was, like, looking in." "Could not see." "And stood there." "Then went... and go "whee!", straight through like that." "And I went... "vyoom!" all the way home." "It was absolutely great." "I went, "Yay!" It was like, "Goal!"" "Just 40 years ago, the Matis had no contact with the outside world." "But the outboard motor has brought small towns within easy reach." "The young men, especially, are influenced by what they see there." "Chima, the chief, remembers the day when their world began to change." "I've been here over a week now and I'm beginning to get the hang of the longhouse rules." "There's a definite... routine to how the food gets done." "Your own family places your food in front of you." "And then you either offer it up in turn or you kind of give the nod and let everyone help themselves." "And I'm just now getting the hang of it so that when they do the nod I'm also there, joining in." "For the first few days..." "I never did." "And so missed out." "Just watched these bowls, smelling of lovely stuff disappear, thinking," ""I just don't know well enough the routine to get in. "" "But now I'm just getting stuck in and it's working." "The next day, I go with the women and children to collect cocoa fruit." "I'm hoping this day out will be a little more gentle than the hunt." "I can't compete with any of these guys." "I used to be champion tree-climber at school but no, I wouldn't even try and embarrass myself here." "Tumi, you're like a little koala bear." " Hah." " There you go, my friend." "This one?" "No, it's too small." "This... is absolutely divine." "Ay!" "He's a right little wretch." "I can't work him out at all." "Sometimes he's really lovely and offers you food, other times he comes up and he punches you as hard as he can in the stomach." "Or he swings your hammock to make sure you're not asleep or enjoying yourself." "Anything like that." "He's definitely gonna be the chief one day, I think." "It's been a lovely day with the family, and, of course, the sandflies." "That evening I'm invited to take part in more animal dances." "I always get the action!" "See what I mean?" "Later, I'm a tapir crawling through the jungle." "I think I'm just about to walk into a trap." "Literally." "Agh!" " Matu maka weykren." " Masu mana kweywen." " Omar wey kwen." " Omar wey kwen." " Chari." " Chari." " Matu areykan." " Matsu wareykan." " Chari." " Chari." "Whoa, man!" "Say once more." "Muru gwishki mop poy koncho abi ego wi chobo genami tombi tashu nagio stona." "Muru iskyi laballa borgon doynchu tey dons dey soni minimeo jumilia swena mabada!" "Did I really stand a chance with that one?" "I don't think so." "It seems er..." "I could have offended now." "I've just been inviting every girl in the village to come and have all sorts of fun with me." "Apparently." "So, no wonder there was a lot of amusement to everything I said." "I'm halfway through my stay when some of the hunters arrive at Tumi's hut with a blowpipe." "For me." "OK, I'm just gonna try and hold that steady." "OK?" "If it's directly up it's not so bad but any sort of a slant... you feel the weight." "And holding that, of course, is only half the skill." "The real skill comes..." "from making... the dart." "And then he just slides it in, simple as that." "And then..." "I watch you." "Oh, me?" "You want me to." "OK." "What at?" "My first ever go." "Like... big lungful." "Hoi!" "Almost a thumbs up!" "Wow!" "That's real praise." "You don't feel like it's going." "It's like such a long pole that..." "If you fire a pea-shooter it's like... and you can feel the air, the wind coming out the end of it." "But this, your wind is almost gone before it disappears and so you never feel that release." "If that made any sense." "No." "Too low." "Too low." "Too low." "He's taking the central stem from all of these rattan plants." "And I'm a bit curious cos he's collecting a few of them now." "I feared as much." "It now seems these rattan stems" "I've been collecting are being transformed into whips." "Tumi, what's the importance of whipping in Matis culture?" "Once we're back at the village, the second of the four hunting rituals begins." "Ooh." "That's..." "I certainly felt that." "Interestingly, at the same time, inside, just as I walked out, two guys, dressed in what must be erm... well, foliage, looking like spirits of the forest, have just walked in." "Wooo!" "Wooo!" "These are the Miruwin spirits." "Wooo!" "Wooo!" "They whip children to stimulate growth and to cure laziness." "Even pregnant women are whipped to strengthen their unborn children." "Wooo!" "Wooo!" "It's weird." "In the culture here they never, ever chastise their children at all." "You'll never see a parent ever hitting their kids." "The only form of sort of corporal punishment at all that they get is through this spirit that comes in." "And erm... and it looks so strange to us." "And it doesn't look very pleasant, I know." "The Matis say the whip of a Miruwin spirit transfers a mystical energy called "sho" into a child." "The energy is thought to enhance the skill of the hunters and to boost the power of the shamans." "But when the Matis were struck down by disease in the 1980s, the shamans were powerless to stop the death toll." "It left the Matis feeling vulnerable." "Many of the Matis shamans died during the first wave of modern disease." "Much of their knowledge of herbal medicine was lost with them." "Now the Matis are largely dependent upon FUNAl for all their healthcare." "The Matis have kept the knowledge of their most powerful and dangerous natural remedy." "It's the third way for me to become a better hunter and it's the one I'm dreading the most - frog poison." "Ah!" "So that's my branding!" "There you go." "Wow." "Just... opened the wound there." "And she's got the poison." "A woman named Tupa takes the poisonous secretions from a green tree-frog and places it straight into my bloodstream." "OK." "I definitely feel something." "A little bit light-headed but..." "nothing... nothing too bad at all." "I feel a stinging in the arm but I now feel a sort of welling all over." "A little bit woozy." "I'm definitely light-headed." "I feel like I'm flushed." "A little bit light-headed." "Ooh." "Feeling a bit rough." "It looks like there's a heat shimmer everywhere." "I feel, like, woozy, but I..." "I'm not ready to vomit yet." "Oh, and it's..." "Gas is starting to come up." "I'm told that resistance to the poison is a sign of strength." "But that doesn't make me feel any better." "Agh!" "That one hurt!" "God..." "She was gonna do it in the arm and then she just stuck it in my side." "Feel worse and worse." "I just wish it would go away." "Just get it out." "My bowels are moving now." "After an hour, Tupa washes the poison off and I head for the bushes." "That was... an evacuation." "I er..." "I do genuinely feel like there is nothing left inside me." "I've got..." "I feel like I'm..." "In every sense I'm just... empty." "It's not a great feeling, right yet." "Ooh." "Bizarrely, I've just kind of come round." "I was just about to sit back in my hammock." "Just come back from the loo and I feel... like that massive headache and gripping inside my gut and that wave of nausea has just kind of been lifted." "And they said..." "Once they wiped off all the poison, they said, "You won't feel sick any more. "" "Yeah." "And I feel fine now." "Yeah." "How very odd!" "And I do feel..." "I feel kind of... light and bouncy, yeah." "Oh, great!" "I wasn't expecting that." "That afternoon, the men prepare darts for the next hunt." "Tumi, if I was to lick this, what would it do to me?" "The Matis hunt wild monkeys for food but they also keep them as pets." "They're usually taken as babies when their mothers are killed in a hunt." "That evening, the young men of the village put on their first-ever disco." "They've learnt salsa dancing in town and now, armed with a radio and some torches, they want to bring a bit of the city back to the village." "But next morning, not everyone is pleased about the disco." "Some of the younger Matis tell me that they don't like city life, either." "Bush, a student, often stays in town." "Bush and the younger Matis may want to learn the ways of the outside world but I want to learn about how they live in the rainforest." "One of the hunters, Damu, offers me a masterclass." "This is the ingenious bit." "So the diameter is about a centimetre." "And... considering it's just..." "like cotton, it's surprisingly tough." "So, once again, the clay..." "Slightly thinner... at the back end." "Then... slightly wet." "Twisted." "And licked." "Right, the first thing you do... find the end." "Bit of clay." "Fold it around." "About here?" "And then... a little bit." "That much?" "This much." "And... hand on and you're just gonna spin it." "OK." "Now... in the middle?" "Now... this is the fiddly bit." "Then lick it..." "Somehow..." "See how they do that?" "It's just incredible." "This..." "Brra?" "This so isn't brra." "Have you seen the shape of theirs compared to the shape of mine?" "Theirs are like flat discs and this is just a big lump." "Not falling out?" "Oh, it's not fallen out." "Right, then, let's see if I can... get... this thing..." "What happened there?" "I didn't have enough puff, obviously." "I return to Tumi's house to find a session of body-painting under way." "The paint is the juice from the fruit of a genipapo tree." "The pattern is based on the skin of a frog." "As far as I can tell, the painting no longer has any great meaning." "It's simply for fun and decoration." "Tumi offers to paint a jaguar pattern on me." "Check that." "Just had another summons to the longhouse." "No idea what for." "They seem to be getting quite regular." "No doubt..." "I'll find out soon enough." "And yes, of course, it's my fourth and final ritual - the poces leaf." "Well, it's exactly... what it says on the label." "Ah!" "Don't know if that was..." "for something I did earlier or not." "But er... she seemed to take a great deal of relish out of that!" "It's just like a..." "I suppose it's just like a stinging nettle." "Strangely, that's one of the least pleasant of all of them." "I'm... tingling all over, as you'd imagine, from being stung as well as the spikes." "But it's obviously got some toxin in cos it's a tingle." "I'm really..." "It's like nettles." "I'm going a bit red." "With the completion of my final ritual," "I spend the rest of the day practising with my blowpipe." "Tomorrow is the big hunt." "After walking an hour, we hear wild turkeys." "It's my first chance to use my blowpipe for real." "Really close." "But..." "And I saw them really close, twice." "But just never got a chance." "Every time I got this thing into place they had already wandered off." "They knew I was there and... just too fast waddling through the undergrowth." "These guys would have just snapped it in seconds but..." "I'm just not quick enough." "They've told me to wait here." "Cos they're onto a spider monkey and they're really hard to stalk cos any noise and they're just off, they're so alert." "So they don't want me to go in there and ruin it for them." "There's all sorts of kerfuffle going on in the canopy." "And we've heard two crashes and thumps as two of the monkeys have come through the trees and landed on the floor." "Three of the spider monkeys that have fallen have got babies." "Three." "Well, that's the reality here, that..." "That's just the reality here." "He's just stuck a dart into its tail to speed up the process." "Two the babies will be adopted." "This one, however, is too young to survive." "There's been, like, two or three shotguns fired." "But... most of this kill here is from these blowpipes." "And as you're walking along, when I was in the middle of the monkeys just then, you just hear a crash, boom, crash, boom, as all these animals are just falling around you." "You never hear anything other than just that." "It's... quite eerie, spooky." "Another hunter has hit a woolly monkey." "I'm told to finish it off." "There you go." "One woolly monkey." "I can't take any credit at all for killing it." "Erm..." "I got there just as this guy had shot it and he ran on cos he wanted to go and get more, cos they were still in the trees." "But he was insistent before he left, "You must get more darts in" ""because otherwise it might not die." "There might not be enough poison in it. "" "So I just had to stand there and just keep firing, keep firing." "And out of, like, 20 shots I must have got two in." "It's been quite a busy morning." "We got 11 woolly monkeys, six spider monkeys, two or three of the jungle-fowl birds and a collared peccary." "So, quite a lot of meat." "I'm glad to see that after today's hunt even the Matis are tired." "Sadly, I've come to the end of my stay." "Living with the Matis has been wonderful and I've learned so much." "I know that I will never be a hunter like you." "Never, never, never." "But to spend a little time watching and being with you... has been an amazing experience for me and I want to thank you all." "And being here in the longhouse has been such fun and you've been such great hosts and great company." "It's made me feel so welcome." "It's been great." "To you, my friend, thank you so much for everything." "It's really sad to say goodbye to you." "I'm gonna miss you." "Contact with the outside world has had dramatic consequences for the Matis." "They've survived deadly epidemics and rapid cultural change." "They now want modern healthcare and education but they are dependent on government agencies to provide them." "And old Matis man told me that they were happier before first contact, but now that they've seen our world they can never go back." "As I head back past the Korubo tribe," "I can't help but hope that they are allowed to enter our world in their own time and on their own terms."