Nukak and Tukano in Colombia

Subjected to lethal attacks by settlers during the rubber boom, 20 Nukak were killed by settlers in 1987. Survivors of the attack who were taken to the New Tribes Mission Station were subsequently returned to the forest with no medication against the diseases they carried with them. Between 1988 and 1991 Nukak were decimated by imported diseases such as influenza.

In April 2008 the UNHCR deemed it necessary to organize a humanitarian mission to provide emergency aid to Guyabero and Nukak-Makú communities living along the Guaviare River in south-central Colombia. Fourteen tons of food were provided by the World Food Programme (WFP) and delivered by boat to some 1,000 people in the riverside villages of Mocuare, Puerto Alvira and Barranco Colorado, as well as the municipal centre of Mapiripán in which they were all facing an extremely difficult humanitarian situation involving critical food shortages. Reports suggested that most had been forced to flee their lands as a result of the armed conflict, further putting at risk their survival as a unique ethnic group.

Hundreds of people fled the area from the beginning of 2008 with some locations losing nearly 75 per cent of an estimated 3,000-strong population. In the village of Barranco Colorado, only about 40 families (around 200 people) from two indigenous communities were left, virtually cut off from the rest of the world.

The Nukak-Makú, Guyabero, Sikuani and Tukano peoples continue to be the victims of deep discrimination and marginalization. Challenges include the detrimental impacts of various free trade agreements, the protracted civil conflict and subsequent unrest, issues relating to intellectual property which threaten to deny them access to the biological diversity and natural resources found within their territories, and foreign diseases brought by settlers to which their communities have no immunity.

In 1985 there were approximately 1,200 people belonging to these indigenous peoples and since then their numbers have drastically dwindled. There are now currently only 255 surviving Nukak-Makú in Colombia, although the 2018 Census estimated them at 744 people. Mass displacement caused by the occupation of their ancestral lands by illegal armed groups, drug traffickers, indiscriminate aerial fumigations funded by Plan Colombia, state and private capital-led development and mega-projects, together with violence and murders against their leaders and communities, committed mainly by the same illegal armed actors, are additional factors behind their pending disappearance. This is especially the case since these activities have destroyed the local economy which was focused mainly on fishing, hunting and bartering.

In particular, occupation of their territory by FARC guerillas forced the community out of their territory and displaced them to a small area outside where they were reliant on aid rations and unable to practice many of their established traditions. The effects of this displacement have undermined the community’s cultural identity and reportedly led to widespread despair, anxiety and related problems such as alcoholism.

Nukak are also caught up in the violence surrounding the Colombian drug trade. They are attacked both by coca growers and by the military, whose pilots apparently mistake them for coca growers or left-wing guerillas.