Amazon: Brazilian official killed by arrow near indigenous tribe

A prominent Brazilian expert on isolated tribes in the Amazon was killed by an arrow that struck him in the chest as he approached an indigenous site.

Rieli Franciscato, 56, died Wednesday in a remote region of the Rondônia state in northwestern Brazil.

He was in the area to monitor a tribe as part of his job for the government’s indigenous agency, Funai.

Witnesses said Franciscato and his party were attacked when they approached an indigenous group.

Franciscato, who was accompanied by police, tried to take cover behind a vehicle but was hit in the chest by an arrow, witnesses said.

A police officer who witnessed the incident said Franciscato managed to remove the arrow, which struck him above the heart.

“He screamed, pulled the arrow out of his chest, ran 50 meters (164 feet) and collapsed, lifeless,” the officer said in an audio recording posted on social media.

A photojournalist from the region, Gabriel Uchida, told the AFP news agency that Franciscato had been trying to observe a tribe known as the “isolated group from the Cautario river.”

Uchida, who also witnessed the incident, said the tribe used to be “a peaceful group”, but “this time, there were only five armed men, a war group.”

Indigenous groups in the Amazon and other parts of the world are known to react violently to outsiders on their lands.

The Kaninde Ethno-Environmental Defense Association, an NGO that Franciscato helped found in the 1980s, said the indigenous group did not have the ability to distinguish between a friend or an enemy from the outside world.

Indigenous leaders say incidents with illegal miners, farmers and loggers on their ancestral lands have become much more common since Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro took office in 2019, vowing to develop the Amazon region.

Conservationists blame Bolsonaro and his government for underfunding agencies like Funai and the environmental compliance agency Ibama and turning a blind eye to farmers and loggers clearing land in the Amazon, accelerating deforestation.

But Bolsonaro has long questioned the need for large indigenous reserves in the rainforest and has championed the development of the Amazon by opening up protected areas for agriculture and mining.

At Funai, Franciscato led a program to protect uncontacted indigenous groups.

“Rieli dedicated his life to the indigenous cause. He had more than three decades of service and leaves an immense legacy for the protection of these peoples,” said Funai official Ricardo Lopes Dias.