Sometimes One Has to Lie?

The lost Amazonian tribe poses for a photo with friends Bigfoot, Chupacabra, and the Loch Ness Monster.

A few weeks ago I wrote about the aerial photos taken of an allegedly uncontacted and undocumented tribe located in Brazil near the border of Peru. In the blog, I speculated that the pictures were staged. And guess what? The pics were fake! Well, kinda...

It turns out that the photographer, sertanista Jose Carlos Meirelles, used a borrowed aircraft to fly over a Brazilian tribe that was discovered in 1910. For two days Meirelles and his crew flew over the tribe’s camp, provoking them enough to douse themselves in war paint and brandish their weapons to defend themselves against the "giant bird" in the sky. This aggressive reaction pleased Meirelles as he shot the dramatic images which were released to the news media. It was the wacky news media misreported circumstances of photos taken by militant protector of the Amazonian tribes. At least that's what Meirelles claims. Not his fault.

I hope the tribe sues Meirelles for millions for exploiting and misrepresenting them.

This incident is reminiscent of the filming of the documentary "Nanook of the North", shot on an Arctic expedition led by Robert J. Flaherty in 1920. During the making of this "true to life" film, Flaherty purchased Inuit clothing for the natives to wear because their regular attire was unremarkable. He also made poor Nanook build an igloo numerous times in the freezing snow just to get a variety of camera angles. And finally, Flaherty had the igloo built larger than normal to accommodate his film equipment. In his defense, Flaherty stated, "Sometimes you have to lie. One often has to distort a thing to catch its true spirit."

Indeed.