Amazon nomads and missionaries

I just saw a video article on the BBC about a group of Peruvian nomads, unseen (by the press and the scientists) for over 30 years. Apparently these people didn't want to join the "civilized" world and retreated into their jungle home. Now that they've been spotted in an area that is up for bids to multiple international petroleum conglomerates, their lives will be, once again, up for debate. I have so many feelings about that. All of them sad. I'd like to say that people who drive Hummers are evil. But that would be to mystify the workings of power. While I still think people who drive Hummers are delusional and misguided (to say the least), I also fear that it is misguided to blame individuals for problems that are corporate. Of course, we all do collude in electing people who are motivated by the greed of the next election and incapable of thinking or seeing past their own noses. But, we (in most of the US without access to public transportation) are realistically trapped in a system that denies us viable alternatives to driving our own cars. We send each other clever little emails about boycotting gas stations to "show them who's boss," but come on! We aren't really interested in changing the power dynamics, are we? That would mean giving up too much. Giving up too many opportunities to make money. Too many opportunities to simply pay the bills. Giving up the "freedom and independence" of our own transportation that we have cleverly been sold on as indicative of our individual worth. How many ways does your car express your "individuality?" How many ways do your shoes do the same thing? I don't want to wax pessimistic, but I'm just in the mood. Most depressing of all is the apparent fact that US-based christian missionaries are making inroads into these communities and blessing the lord for helping them get the heathen to see their sinning ways. This fills me with a rage and disgust that I have a hard time letting go of. Why are the missionaries, who claim to care about these nomads, exposing them to disease with contact? Why are they giving them translated tapes of their bible rather than translated tapes of the constitutions of their countries or translated tapes explaining their international legal rights as people? We all know why.
I need to talk a little about these pictures, though. I debated putting up the second two because they look like the subjects are unaware of the camera. This type of imagery has always been used to portray a false sense of intimacy and immediacy for the viewer. If the subjects aren't aware of the camera, then the viewer has (what she believes to be) an unmediated view into/onto their lives, a god's-eye view. But this is never true. The first picture is the best, I think. The subject is very aware of the looker. The others let us look and think, falsely, that our gaze is accurate and unbiased. But I did add the second and third pictures because they seemed less depressing than the first.
So I'll end this little diatribe. Maybe something good will happen tomorrow. You never know.