‘On our own territory’: Colombia’s last nomadic tribe fights to return home

Returning home

About 70 percent of the Nukak colonisation remains displaced from their ancestral lands, according to the FCDS.

Most families person been pushed into sedentary lifestyles, settling successful makeshift camps connected the borderline of towns, wherever addiction and kid intersexual exploitation became widespread.

Others person settled connected tiny plots successful agrarian areas, wherever tensions with settlers flared implicit onshore disputes.

“The settlers took implicit the onshore arsenic if it were vacant. They accidental determination were nary Nukak, but what happened was that the Nukak got sick and left,” said Njibe.

In the astir distant reaches of the Amazon, wherever the Nukak preservation is located, the Colombian authorities has small presence.

The Nukak, therefore, person fewer ineligible protections from settler unit erstwhile they effort to reclaim their lands.

A Nukak elder teaches her granddaughter, Linda Palma, however to marque a bracelet from thenar fibres [Alexandra McNichols-Torroledo/Al Jazeera]

But successful caller years, Nukak members similar Njibe, bushed of waiting for authorities action, resolved to instrumentality connected their own.

The thought gained traction successful 2020, erstwhile respective clans retreated into the jungle for fearfulness of the COVID-19 pandemic.

But aft returning to their comparative isolation, the clans considered staying for good. They called connected nongovernmental organisations similar FCDS for support.

At that time, Njibe was surviving connected a tiny workplace wrong the limits of the Nukak Maku reservation.

Even wrong the reservation, decades of colonisation had razed ample swaths of the forest. Grassy pastures dotted with cows had replaced the Amazon's towering thenar trees.

Deforestation had accrued successful the aftermath of a 2016 bid woody betwixt the authorities and the FARC. The rebel radical antecedently constricted deforestation successful the Amazon successful bid to usage its dense canopies arsenic screen against aerial surveillance.

But, arsenic portion of the deal, FARC — the largest equipped rebel radical astatine the clip — agreed to demobilise. A powerfulness vacuum emerged successful its place.

According to FCDS, almighty landowners rapidly moved into areas formerly controlled by the FARC, converting the onshore into cattle pastures.

Armed dissident groups who rejected the bid woody besides remained progressive successful the area, charging extortion fees per cow.

“The colonisation process has caused galore [Nukak] sites to beryllium either destroyed oregon absorbed by settler farms,” said a FCDS adept who asked not to beryllium named for fearfulness of retaliation.

Two Nukak children play successful the waters of the Amazon rainforest [Alexandra McNichols-Torroledo/Al Jazeera]

Still, successful 2022, the FCDS forged up with a aviator programme to enactment 7 Nukak communities arsenic they settled deeper into the reservation, wherever the lush wood inactive remained. There, the Nukak hoped they could revive a much traditional, if not wholly nomadic, mode of life.

But galore of the expeditions to place imperishable relocation sites failed.

Initially, Njibe hoped to determination to a ineffable water wrong the preservation that helium recalled from his childhood, but erstwhile helium arrived astatine the site, helium recovered that it was present portion of a ranch.

When helium asked the settler who ran the ranch for support to enactment there, the rancher rejected his request, and Njibe was forced to take different spot to live.

He considered returning to a forested country — astir 24 hectares (59 acres) wide, astir the size of 33 shot fields — that helium considered his puerility home.

But that excessively laic wrong a ranch. This time, however, the settler successful question, who Njibe said was much sympathetic to his onshore claims, allowed him to stay.