I heard about the plight of the Awa, who only number about 100 now, and couldn't quite work out how it was that in such a huge country the foresters had to plough great ugly access tracks through the modest lands these people have lived in simply but safely for a thousand years.
Until now they have lived their lives, generation after generation, the way they have for centuries.
Everything seemed to work, so why change?
Plenty of crops to grow and eat and plenty of shelter for them.
No diseases or viruses, and no issues with resource consents or building permits.
No religious differences or conflicts, and no screaming tyres or howling engines at midnight.
Just the simple life they had always known.
Until now.
It's quite a romantic old school sort of notion ... the "lost tribe" thing. Untouched by civilisation (or loggers) and living life as simply as it could be lived.
It's not a bad sort of notion. Wake up, look out through the thatched leafen walls and notice there is a humid rain falling. Back to the thatched leafen bed cover and sleep in a little longer.
Get up later, boil some water and make a cup of tea out of some strange plant which after two cups makes you feel sort of ... happy.
Have a slice of fruit then go out and shoot something up a tree.
That's dinner sorted.
Wander off down to the river to fill up the clay pots and check the beans and potato crops on the way back.
Call your mates over and play "spot the ocelot" and have a few sips of the amber fluid one of them concocted from soybeans.
Then lie back and listen to the monkeys screech while you plan your next day. Which is basically what you did today except you may go and do some fishing as well.
No wonder the Awa are distraught at the intrusion of the outside world.
They have lived the lifestyle they are comfortable with for centuries, but now that's going to change.
They will have highways crossing their rivers and the plateau above - and the great forests to the south will be stripped. What's left will be burned.
Then the miners will come and start seeking iron ore. Basically, there goes the neighbourhood.
It's sad, but then there's also that other scenario.
When you have a lost tribe such as the shy and isolated Awa there are always adventure-television producers or tourism companies who will want to seek them out.
Leaving them alone is never quite part of life's rich equation.
Logging and mining is, I daresay, a vital thing for many countries, but the way it has been blasted across Brazil is quite brutal.
The great rainforests are being hacked apart or flooded by dams.
Just doesn't seem to be a realistic plan to it all.
Quite remarkable really, because at the other end of the scale we have governmental protective orders in place here which prevent areas of native forest from being harvested ... to ensure the survival of rare snails.
If it were not for the fact that living in these environments would cause illness among the Awa (as they have no natural resistance to even minor diseases) that could have been one solution to leaving them in peace.
There comes a time when even the commercial and financial giants should stand back and consider what is going on.
And in the case of the dear Awa tribe, take the simple "let's leave them alone" stance and just them get on ... with life.
-Roger Moroney is an award-winning journalist for Hawke's Bay Today and observer of the slightly off-centre
