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Now, I'm an ethnobotanist.

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That's a scientist who works in the rain forest

3
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to document how people use local plants.

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I've been doing this for a long time,

5
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and I want to tell you,

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these people know these forests

7
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and these medicinal treasures

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better than we do and
better than we ever will.

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But also, these cultures,

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these indigenous cultures,

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are disappearing much faster

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than the forests themselves,

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and the greatest and
most endangered species

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in the Amazon rain forest

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is not the jaguar,

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it's not the harpy eagle,

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it's the isolated and uncontacted tribes.

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Now four years, I injured my foot

19
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in a climbing accident

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and I went to the doctor.

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She gave me heat,

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she gave me cold, Aspirin,

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narcotic painkillers, anti-inflammatories,

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cortisone shots.

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It didn't work.

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Several months later,

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I was in the northeast Amazon,

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walked into a village,

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and the shaman said, "You're limping."

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And I'll never forget
this as long as I live.

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He looked me in the face and he said,

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"Take off your shoe

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and give me your machete."

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(Laughter)

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He walked over to a palm tree

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and carved off a fern,

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threw it in the fire,

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applied it to my foot,

39
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threw it in a pond of water,

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and had me drink the tea.

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The pain disappeared for seven months.

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When it came back, I went
to see the shaman again.

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He gave me the same treatment,

44
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and I've been cured for three years now.

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Who would you rather be treated by?

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(Applause)

47
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Now make no mistake, Western medicine

48
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is the most successful system of healing

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ever devised,

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but there's plenty of holes in it.

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Where's the cure for breast cancer?

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Where's the cure for schizophrenia?

53
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Where's the cure for acid reflux?

54
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Where's the cure for insomnia?

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The fact is that these people

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can sometimes, sometimes, sometimes

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cure things we cannot.

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Here you see a medicine man
in the northeast Amazon

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treating Leishmaniasis,

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a really nasty protozoal disease

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that afflicts 12 million
people around the world.

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Western treatment are
injections of antimony.

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They're painful, they're expensive,

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and they're probably
not good for your heart.

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It's a heavy metal.

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This man cures it with

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three plants from the Amazon rain forest.

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This is the magic frog.

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My colleague, the late
great Loren McIntyre,

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discoverer of the source lake of Amazon,

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Laguna McIntyre in the Peruvian Andes,

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was lost on the Peru-Brazil border

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about 30 years ago.

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He was rescued by a group of isolated

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Indians called the Matses.

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They beckoned for him to follow them

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into the forest, which he did.

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There, they took out palm leaf baskets.

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There, they took out these
green monkey frogs

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— These are big suckers,
they're like this —

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and they began licking them.

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It turns out, they're
highly hallucinogenic.

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McIntyre wrote about this, and it was read

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by the editor of High Times Magazine.

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You see, the ethnobotanists have friends

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in all sorts of strange cultures.

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This guy decided he would go down

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to the Amazon and give it a whirl,

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or give it a lick, and he did,

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and he wrote,

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"My blood pressure went through the roof,

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I lost full control of
my bodily functions,

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I passed out in a heap,

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I woke up in a hammock six hours later,

95
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felt like God for two days.

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(Laughter)

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An Italian chemist read this and said,

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"I'm not really interested
in the theological aspects

99
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of the green monkey frog.

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What's this about the
change in blood presure?

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Now, this is an Italian chemist

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who's working on a new treatment
for high blood pressure

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based on peptides in the skin

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of the green monkey frog,

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and other scientists are looking

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at a cure for drug-resistant staph aureus.

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How ironic, if these isolated Indians

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and their magic frog

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prove to be one of the cures.

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Here's an Ayahuasca shaman

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in the northwest Amazon, in
the middle of a yage ceremony.

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I took him to Los Angeles

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to meet a foundation officer

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looking for support

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for moneys to protect their culture.

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This fellow looked at the
medicine man, and he said,

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"You didn't go to medical school, did you"

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The shaman said, "No, I did not."

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He said, "Well, then what can
you know about healing?"

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The shaman looked at him and he said,

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"You know what? If you have an infection,

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go to a doctor,"

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but he said, "but many human afflictions

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are disease of the heart,

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the mind, and the spirit.

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Western medicine can't touch those.

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I cure them."

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(Applause)

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But all is not rosy in learning

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from nature about new medicines.

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This is a viper from Brazil,

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the venom of which was studied at
the Universidade de São Paulo here.

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It was later developed

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into ace inhibitors.

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This is a frontline treatment
for hypertension.

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Hypertension kills over 10 percent

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of all deaths on the planet everyday.

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This is a four billion dollar industry

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based on venom from a Brazilian snake,

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and the Brazilians did not get a nickel.

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This is not an acceptable way

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of doing business.

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The rain forest has been called

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the greatest expression of life on Earth.

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There's a saying in Suriname

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that I dearly love:

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"The rain forests hold answers

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to questions we have yet to ask."

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But as you all know,
it's rapidly disappearing,

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here in Brazil, in the Amazon,

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around the world.

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I took this picture from a small plane

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flying over the eastern border
of the Xingu indigenous reserve

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in the state of Mato Grosso
to the northwest of here.

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The top half of the picture,

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you see where the Indians live.

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The line through the middle

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is the eastern border of the reserve.

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Top half Indians, bottom half white guys.

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Top half wonder drugs,

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bottom half just a bunch
of skinny-ass cows.

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Top half carbon sequestered

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in the forest where it belongs,

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bottom half carbon in the atmosphere

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where it's driving climate change.

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In fact, the number two cause

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of carbon being released
into the atmosphere

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is forest destruction.

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But in talking about destruction,

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it's important to keep in mind

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that the Amazon is the mightiest

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landscape of all.

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It's a place of beauty and wonder.

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The biggest anteater in the world

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lives in the rain forest,

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tips the scale at 90 pounds.

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The goliath bird-eating spider

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is the world's largest spider.

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It's found in the Amazon as well.

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The harpy eagle wingspan

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is over seven feet.

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And the black cayman.

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These monsters can tip the scale

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at over half a ton.

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They're known to be man-eaters.

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The anaconda, the largest snake,

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the capybara, the largest rodent.

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A specimen from here in Brazil

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tipped the scale at 201 pounds.

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Let's visit where these creatures live,

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the northeast Amazon,

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home to the Akuriyo tribe.

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Uncontacted peoples

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hold a mystical and iconic role

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in our imagination.

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These are the people who know nature best.

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These are the people who truly live

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in total harmony with nature.

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By our standards, some would
dismiss these people as primitive.

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They don't know how to make fire,

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or they didn't when they
were first contacted,

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but they know the forest

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far better than we do.

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The Akuriyos have 35 words for honey,

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and other Indians look up to them

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as being the true masters

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of the emerald realm.

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Here you see the face of my friend Ponay.

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When I was a teenager rocking out

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to the Rolling Stones in my
hometown of New Orleans,

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Ponay was a forest normad

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roaming the jungles of
the northeast Amazon

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in a small band,

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looking for game,

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looking for medicinal plants,

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looking for a wife

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99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
in other small nomadic bands.

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But it's people like these

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that know things that we don't,

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and they have lots of lessons

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to teach us.

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However, if you go into most

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99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
of the forests of the Amazon,

224
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there are no indigenous peoples.

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This is what you find:

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99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
rock carvings which indigenous peoples,

227
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
uncontacted peoples, used to sharpen

228
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the edge of the stone axe.

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These cultures that once danced,

230
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made love, sang to the gods,

231
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worshipped the forest,

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99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
all that's left is an imprint in stone,

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as you see here.

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Let's move to the western Amazon,

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which is really the epicenter
of isolated peoples.

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Each of these dots represents

237
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
a small, uncontacted tribe,

238
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and the big reveal today is

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99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
we believe there are 14 or 15 isolated groups

240
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in the Columbian Amazon alone.

241
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Why are these people isolated?

242
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
They know we exist, they
know there's an outside world.

243
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This is a form of resistance.

244
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They have chosen to remain isolated,

245
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and I think it is their
human right to remain so.

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99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Why are these the tribes
that hide from man?

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Here's why. Obviously some of this

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was set off in 1492,

249
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but at the turn of the last century

250
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
was the rubber trade.

251
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
The demand for natural rubber,

252
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
which came from the Amazon,

253
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
set off the botanical
equivalent of a gold rush.

254
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Rubber for bicycle tires,

255
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
rubber for automobile tires,

256
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
rubber for zeppelins.

257
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
It was a mad race to get that rubber,

258
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and the man on the left, Julio Arana,

259
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
is one of the true thugs of the story.

260
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His people, his company,

261
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and other companies like them

262
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
killed, massacred, tortured,

263
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
butchered Indians like the Witotos you see

264
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on the right hand side of the slide.

265
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Even today, when people
come out of the forest,

266
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
the story seldom has a happy ending.

267
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
These are Nukaks. They
were contacted in the '80s.

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99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Within a year, everybody over 40 was dead.

269
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
And remember, these
are preliterate societies.

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99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
The elders are the libraries.

271
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Every time a shaman dies,

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99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
it's as if a library has been burned down.

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They have been forced off their lands.

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The drug traffickers have taken over

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the Nukak lands,

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and the Nukaks live as beggars

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in public parks in eastern Colombia.

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From the Nukak lands, I want to take you

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to the southwest, to the most spectacular

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landscape in the world:

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Chiribiquete National Park.

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It was surrounded by three isolated tribes

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and thanks to the Colombian government

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and Colombian colleagues,

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it has now expanded.

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It's bigger than the state of Maryland.

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It is a treasure trove
of botanical diversity.

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It was first explored botanically in 1943

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by my mentor, Richard Schultes,

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seen here atop the Bell Mountain,

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the sacred mountains of the Carajás?

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And let me show you
what it looks like today.

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Flying over Chiribiquete,

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realize that these lost world
mountains are still lost.

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No scientist has been atop them.

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In fact, nobody has been
atop the Bell Mountain

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since Schultes in '43,

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and we'll end up here
with the Bell Mountain

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just to the east of the picture.

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Let me show you what it looks like today.

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Not only is this a treasure
trove of botanical diversity,

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not only is it home to
three isolated tribes,

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but it's the greatest treasure trove

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of pre-Colombian art in the world:

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over 200,000 paintings.

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The Dutch scientist Thomas van der Hammen

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described this as the Sistine Chapel

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of the Amazon rain forest.

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But move from Chiribiquete
down to the southeast,

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again in the Colombian Amazon.

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Remember, the Colombian Amazon

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is bigger than New England.

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The Amazon's a big forest,

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and Brazil's got a big part of it,

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but not all of it.

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Moving down to these two national parks,

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Cahuinari and Puré

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in the Colombian Amazon

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— that's the Brazilian
border to the right —

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it's home to several groups

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of isolated and uncontacted peoples.

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To the trained eye, you
can look at the roofs

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of these maloccas, these longhouses,

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and see that there's cultural diversity.

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These are, in fact, different tribes.

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As isolated as these areas are,

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let me show you how the outside world

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is crowding in.

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Here we see trade and transport
increased in Putamayo.

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With the diminishment of
the Civil War in Colombia,

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the outside world is showing up.

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To the north, we have illegal gold mining,

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also from the east, from Brazil.

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There's increased hunting and fishing

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for commercial purposes.

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We see illegal logging
come in from the south,

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and drug runners are trying to move

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through the park and get into Brazil.

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This, in the past, is why you didn't mess

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with isolated Indians,

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and if it looks like this
picture is out of focus

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because it was taken
in a hurry, here's why.

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(Laughter)

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This looks like — (Applause)

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This looks like a hangar
from the Brazilian Amazon.

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This is an art exhibit in Havana, Cuba.

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A group called Los Carpinteros.

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This is their perception
of why you shouldn't

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mess with uncontacted Indians.

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But the world is changing.

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These are Mascoteros
on the Brazil-Peru border

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who stumbled out of the jungle

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because they were essentially chased out

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by drug runners and timber people,

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and in Peru, there's
a very nasty business.

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It's called human safaris.