{"id":360772,"date":"2020-08-18T06:02:32","date_gmt":"2020-08-18T13:02:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/?post_type=blog&#038;p=360772"},"modified":"2025-05-08T16:47:55","modified_gmt":"2025-05-08T23:47:55","slug":"kuikuro-amazon-tribe-gis-protection","status":"publish","type":"blog","link":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/blog\/kuikuro-amazon-tribe-gis-protection","title":{"rendered":"COVID-19: Amazonian Tribe Applies Location Intelligence to Protect Community"},"author":871,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"sync_status":"","episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","castos_file_data":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[422802],"tags":[276612,430851,1311,160522,295772],"industry":[],"esri-blog-category":[491702],"esri_blog_department":[478192],"class_list":["post-360772","blog","type-blog","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conservation","tag-amazon","tag-covid-19","tag-field-work","tag-health","tag-indigenous","esri-blog-category-health","esri_blog_department-gis-for-good"],"acf":{"video_source":"","video_start":"","video_stop":"","short_description":"The Kuikuro tribe in Brazil\u2019s Amazon rainforest turn from mapping their ancestors to using the same tools to protect themselves.","pdf":{"host_remotely":false,"file":"","file_url":""},"flexible_content":[{"acf_fc_layout":"sidebar","layout":"standard","image_reference":null,"image_reference_figure":"","spotlight_image":null,"section_title":"","spotlight_name":"","position":"Right","content":"An Amazonian tribe, remarkable for its persistence of native traditions, harnesses their innate cartographic understanding to preserve their cultural heritage.\r\n\r\nKey Takeaways\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li>Archaeologists use GIS in the Amazon to map pre-Columbian settlements and modern villages to reveal millennia of cultural continuity and past adaptation practices.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Indigenous people take to the mapping tools to document their resources, plan strategies to mitigate climate change, and protect their cultural heritage.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>When COVID hit, the same tools help the tribe safeguard themselves from the virus.<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>","snippet":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"Hard hit by the pandemic, Brazil case totals are second only to the United States. The coronavirus has reached the remote regions of the Amazon rainforest where it threatens the very existence of vulnerable indigenous people.\r\n\r\nNative communities have reason to be fearful, given that European diseases devastated their ancestors. Just as in other parts of the world, Brazil\u2019s indigenous groups have proven more susceptible to the worst outcomes of COVID-19. They are also farthest away from medical care. As of late July, more than 15,500 indigenous Brazilians have been infected and more than 520 have died.\r\n\r\nThe Kuikuro people live in a remote part of the Amazon within Xingu National Park in Brazil\u2019s Mato Grosso region. Before the virus hit, the tribe of roughly 330 people had embraced <a href=\"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/en-us\/what-is-gis\/overview\">geographic information system (GIS) technology<\/a> for community mapping\u2014capturing connections to their land and safeguarding resources. Now, these same tools provide solutions to urge villagers to stay safe during the pandemic.\r\n\r\n\u201cThe village now has its own COVID-19 dashboard to monitor who\u2019s traveling,\u201d said Michael Heckenberger, professor of Anthropology at the University of Florida. \u201cThe elders want to limit traffic but a lot of the younger members of the community think it\u2019s just the flu. The local view of the virus helps counter misinformation from Brazilian politics.\u201d\r\n<h3><strong>Capturing Cultural Heritage<\/strong><\/h3>\r\nIn 1993, Heckenberger went to live with the Kuikuro people who showed him earthen structures created by their pre-Columbian ancestors. Using a GPS receiver, he started piecing together a large network of sites, and placed them on a map. The effort revealed two complex urban clusters connected by roads, bridges, and canals for canoes. Mapping revealed large circular villages protected by defensive earthworks and ponds for fish farming\u2014a practice that continues today. The archaeological settlement patterns are <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/2008\/08\/anthropologists-3\/\">different than urban development elsewhere<\/a>, but 1,000 years later a similar layout is seen in modern villages, including large central plazas for gatherings and ceremonies."},{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image":360972,"image_position":"right","orientation":"horizontal","hyperlink":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"A long view of culture and history that combines archaeological evidence with modern ethnography helps document dramatic declines in indigenous population over time. \u201cThere were 50,000 or 100,000 people there at one point, but only 500 of them left in 1950,\u201d Heckenberger said. \u201cThis is one of the most remarkable tribes in either North or South America for the persistence of native traditions since 1492.\u201d\r\n\r\nToday, there are 3,000 indigenous people living in 32 separate villages on or near the Xingu River, small gains over historic lows now threatened by the pandemic.\r\n\r\nThe research involves capturing local knowledge, combining that with satellite imagery, and building maps to uncover and preserve the past. His work has been energized by the idea that understanding ancestral practices can help the tribe live more sustainably today. Of particular interest are resource management strategies and landscape engineering practices that might mitigate the rising threats from droughts and wildfires brought on by climate change.\r\n\r\n\u201cWe\u2019re trying to strengthen the tribe\u2019s capacity to address large-scale questions of deforestation, fire, and now pandemics,\u201d Heckenberger said.\r\n<h3><strong>Achieving a Chief\u2019s Vision<\/strong><\/h3>\r\nVillage chief, Afukaka Kuikuro, supports the technology project, embracing the idea of using the tools to record cultural details and help safeguard the tribe. He now takes regular conference calls with a group of collaborators who work to advise, assist, and advocate for the tribe\u2019s safety. Right now, the priority is protection from coronavirus.\r\n\r\n\u201cIn a typical meeting there\u2019s three languages happening at one time\u2014 English, Portuguese, and Kuikuro,\u201d Heckenberger said. \u201cMeanwhile, we have a map. The chief is pointing, and others are talking, and there\u2019s an inherent understanding of geography. He can communicate with scientists and his own people really effectively with this map.\u201d"},{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image":362132,"image_position":"center","orientation":"horizontal","hyperlink":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"Because maps cut across language barriers and convey a common understanding, GIS has become a tool to take action and enhance collaboration.\r\n\r\n\u201cThe most costly and precious part of this work is the relations we have with the Kuikuro,\u201d Heckenberger said. \u201cCOVID has been kind of a remarkable and privileged moment. People are willing to suspend any differences and work together.\u201d\r\n\r\nThe work started with a census, going door to door to record names, ages, and other details about each villager. The tribe knew their own people but placing them all on a map meant they could begin understanding interactions.\r\n\r\n\u201cNow, the four villagers we trained go every day to find out who has come into the village,\u201d Heckenberger said. \u201cThey fill out a multi-page form that lets the doctors and other healthcare workers know how many have left, who is in isolation, and who needs to be.\u201d\r\n\r\nThree villagers who have been the designated data gatherers have taken to the technology, with only minimal training.\r\n\r\n\u201cThey\u2019re not really accustomed to book learning, and something like a formula is completely foreign to them,\u201d Heckenberger said. \u201cTactile and geospatial information is something that comes natural to them and they really embrace it. The Kuikuro have an innate cartographic sensibility. You teach them once and they pick it up.\u201d\r\n<h3><strong>Tracking Movement, Providing Supplies<\/strong><\/h3>\r\nIn addition to determining who has traveled in or out of the village, the field tools capture motives for the movement.\r\n\r\n\u201cThey were leaving the villages to go to the cities for supplies,\u201d said Bruno Moraes, the operational director of the Amazon Hope Collective and the archaeologist who trained the villagers on the use of the tools. \u201cThey used the platform to ask people what they needed and set up a delivery system.\u201d"},{"acf_fc_layout":"gallery","gallery_images":[360822,360942,360862,360852,360812,362142]},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"The handheld tools are helping keep updated maps of the entire village to minimize the spread of disease.\r\n\r\nThough the mapping platform was developed and implemented without COVID-19 in mind, the tribe is embracing the technology\u2019s flexibility to address its most immediate needs.\r\n\r\n\u201cWe switched off the other things we were mapping and turned to the sociological problem of avoiding the spread of COVID,\u201d Moraes said. \u201cIn the process, we may save lives, and that\u2019s the nicest thing we can do with all the work that we\u2019ve been doing over the years.\u201d"},{"acf_fc_layout":"sidebar","layout":"standard","image_reference":null,"image_reference_figure":"","spotlight_image":null,"section_title":"","spotlight_name":"","position":"Center","content":"<h2><strong>Setting Up an Enterprise Computer System in the Amazon Forest<\/strong><\/h2>\r\nThe technical knowledge and software support for the Kuikuro\u2019s enterprise GIS installation comes from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.earthanalytic.com\/\">Earth Analytic<\/a> an Esri partner based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The motivation for this project isn\u2019t monetary, it stems from human connections made over many missions, and a deep belief that technology can help this remote tribe survive.\r\n\r\n\u201cA real benefit of rolling out capabilities of an enterprise GIS is the whole cadre of folks who come together and feed information to the system,\u201d said Wetherbee Dorshow, president and lead scientist of Earth Analytic. Dorshow has a 30-year connection to Heckenberger and has been involved in the multidisciplinary data science work to support the climate, fire, and archaeology research with the Kuikuro for the past four years.\r\n\r\nFor this project, the list of people involved includes the villagers, local healthcare workers and officials, professors at the University of Sao Paulo, Museu Nacional (Brazil\u2019s oldest scientific institution), software licensing from the <a href=\"https:\/\/urldefense.com\/v3\/__http:\/www.puenteinstitute.org\/__;!!CKZwjTOV!icWq1cNXzgxZpQpDmj_aU8gPs9Mfa_FfiVdqMR-E1Oew8ek6VxtQtMc-v_s$\">Puente Institute<\/a>,\u00a0funds from the Pennywise Foundation and people from Instituto Socioamiental (Brazil\u2019s biggest environmental and social nonprofit). Dorshow and his team helped set up the GIS, the dashboard, the field tools, and other technology needed to serve the tribe and associated researchers.\r\n\r\n\u201cWe\u2019ve played around with GIS over the years, but we never really organized it, and we had so much geospatial information,\u201d said Michael Heckenberger, professor of Anthropology at the University of Florida. \u201cWe\u2019ve created solutions for the COVID-19 pandemic, we\u2019re working to map out wildfires, and we still have this deep commitment to use this tool to valorize and preserve cultural heritage.\u201d\r\n\r\nThe Kuikuro enterprise GIS is now delivered via the Esri Geospatial Cloud with internet connectivity coming from a satellite dish that limits capabilities. The team hopes to deliver computing hardware locally to give the tribe better access and control of its data and increase their technical capacity.\r\n\r\n\u201cIt\u2019s our usual time for field work right now, and we were going to conduct workshops and training activities before COVID-19 hit,\u201d Heckenberger said. \u201cWe planned to bring more people in from three other Kuikuro villages to learn techniques, expand the area of collection, and transition to something they can fully administrate.\u201d\r\n\r\nConfigured applications and the new ubiquity of smartphones has made GIS accessible to the tribe, and there\u2019s great potential for more.\r\n\r\n\u201cThey don\u2019t need us to come in and sell some exotic technology that only we can apply,\u201d Heckenberger said. \u201cThey can learn about it themselves, talk amongst themselves about it, and capture this information and spread it far and wide.\u201d","snippet":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"<h3><strong>Cultivating Connections to Elders and Other Tribes<\/strong><\/h3>\r\nMost of the other indigenous groups in the region have suffered many cases and deaths from COVID-19. The Kuikuro have escaped the worst outcomes thanks in part to good leadership, outside support from longtime collaborators and partners, and a modernized approach to visualize, analyze, and attack the crisis.\r\n\r\nThe idea of losing elders hits at the root of a tribe\u2019s identity. These keepers of the culture pass down stories, traditions, and language. In response to COVID-19, tribal leaders have canceled Kuarup, the annual festival that brings together all the indigenous tribes in the Xingu national reserve between July and September to mark the deaths of those who passed the prior year.\r\n\r\nTakuma Kuikuro, coordinator of the Kuikuro Film Collective, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailystar.co.uk\/news\/world-news\/huge-indigenous-death-ritual-cancelled-22372934\">told a reporter<\/a>, \u201cThis is a very sacred period for us. It was a very hard and traumatic decision to make because we don\u2019t know when we will be able to mark the date. And we fear that a possible erasure of our history and our memory is underway.\u201d"},{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image":360912,"image_position":"center","orientation":"horizontal","hyperlink":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"The global crisis is motivating Heckenberger and others who work to deliver technology to Amazon tribes to help them not only reveal their history but preserve their way of life. The COVID-19 solution leads this effort with outreach to expand the solution to more tribes.\r\n\r\n\u201cWe hope to extend the Kuikuro model to help these other groups,\u201d Heckenberger said. \u201cWe\u2019re hoping to get to the point where we can deal with the entire regional system, the whole indigenous area, which is about the size of Vermont.\u201d\r\n\r\nThe project has been focused on creating capacities with villagers who become co-participants and co-administrators. With COVID persisting, the research teams says larger groups in the area are getting excited about using the technology. Now, the team hopes to collect basin scale data\u2014a large regional dataset\u2014to protect some of the last large intact tracts of Amazon rainforest, which are managed and protected by indigenous communities.\r\n\r\n\u201cWe\u2019ve been very careful to orient the people and motivate them to learn the tools,\u201d Heckenberger said. \u201cThey participate in the collection and dissemination of data so they can train and convince other indigenous groups.\u201d\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\nLearn more about how <a href=\"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/en-us\/solutions\/industries\/sustainability\/conservation\/overview\">GIS is used to respond to ecological crises<\/a>. The Kuikuro community has reached out to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.flipcause.com\/hosted_widget\/hostedWidgetHome\/ODkwOTQ=\">raise funds<\/a> to help overcome challenges of the COVID-19 crisis.\r\n\r\nAll images of the tribe are courtesy of the Associa\u00e7\u00e3o Ind\u00edgene Kuikuro Do Alto Xingu (AIKAX)."},{"acf_fc_layout":"youtube","youtube_video_url":"https:\/\/youtu.be\/wucRsfa2JPc"},{"acf_fc_layout":"sidebar","layout":"standard","image_reference":null,"image_reference_figure":"","spotlight_image":null,"section_title":"","spotlight_name":"","position":"Center","content":"<h2><strong>Amazon Experiencing Climate Change<\/strong><\/h2>\r\nIn 2015 and 2016, the Xingu region experienced an extreme drought related to El Ni\u00f1o. Large swathes of forest died off and the dead trees created a fire hazard. Now, the focus has turned to combatting forest fires.\r\n\r\n\u201cThey had a massive drought in 2007, in 2010, then in 2012, 2014, 2015,\u201d Heckenberger said. \u201cEach of these was characterized as a centennial-scale drought, but with five of those in one decade, it was more like the new normal.\u201d\r\n\r\nThe indigenous area is at the bottom of the Amazon\u2019s hydrologic drainage. With deforestation happening in the area, alongside global warming, the bottom of the basin has been drying out and forests are dying, fueling larger fires.\r\n\r\n\u201cWe\u2019ve been working very aggressively with the Kuikuro to try and orient activities to adaptation,\u201d Heckenberger said. \u201cAll of the Kuhikugu structures were built around 800 years ago at the peak of the driest period in the past few thousand years\u2014the Medieval Warm Period. And so, maybe they were already addressing fire and forest management.\u201d\r\n\r\nHeckenberger and the broader team express some urgency because a big portion of the Amazon is going through a macro-regional shift with a loss of forest resilience and biodiversity.\r\n\r\n\u201cWhere there\u2019s living forest, there\u2019s living indigenous people,\u201d Heckenberger said. \u201cIf you want to save the rainforest, you have to save the indigenous tribes.\u201d","snippet":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image":362162,"image_position":"center","orientation":"horizontal","hyperlink":"https:\/\/storymaps.arcgis.com\/stories\/d13c50b64ada4e53856b3d4d64a08bcb"}],"references":null},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.9 (Yoast SEO v25.9) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Amazonian Tribe Applies Location Intelligence to Protect Community<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The Kuikuro tribe in Brazil\u2019s Amazon 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For over 30 years this program makes Esri geographic information system (GIS) technology available to nonprofit and nongovernment conservation organizations globally. David joined Esri in 2002 and has more than two decades of experience helping organizations use GIS in humanitarian and conservation work. He has also served as a technical advisor to the United Nations, US Department of State, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. 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