Developed world responds oddly to Starlink’s integration in Brazilian tribe

Nowadays most indigenous communities – even those we may like to believe are ‘untouched’ – have made contact with the wider world. Even more now use technology like smartphones. 

But the morose narratives surrounding these facts are uncomfortably patronising, and extend a colonial sentiment in and of themselves. 

Of course reports of death and disease following ‘first contacts’ between tribes and the wider world are devastating. But the West continues to uphold the notion that it is they, and they alone, who should determine how indigenous peoples exist within society.

The Marubo, an isolated Amazon tribe, connected to high-speed internet in September through Elon Musk’s Starlink. Jack Nicas, our Brazil bureau chief, visited the tribe’s remote villages to see what the internet has changed for them. https://t.co/JXwhPDcR3L pic.twitter.com/7CKCHsY4QX

— The New York Times (@nytimes) June 2, 2024

If developed societies have been impacted by the modern world and its accompanying tools, we shouldn’t be surprised when everyone else is. 

The Marubo tribe is now facing the same challenges that have changed all modern households; social media addiction, group chats, and teenagers glued to their phones. But this doesn’t mean their culture is eroding. 

To presume so is to suggest that an ideal version of indigenous society exists. But this is an ideal crafted in the colonial psyche. 

The Marubo can not be frozen in time and isolated in space simply to meet the fantasy of an untouched culture. Change is a part of life, one that everyone has the right to – for better or worse. 

As has already been evidenced by reporters on the ground, internet access for these tribal communities won’t be without its pitfalls. But it’s also brought life saving changes, like the chance to call for help in a medical emergency. 

The reaction from the wider world, then, reveals a deep-seated contradiction. Introducing internet access is not about imposing a certain way of life, but rather about providing the means for communities to engage with the world on their own terms. 

To ‘shelter’ indigenous communities from modern technology is rooted in colonial narratives that see tribal peoples as primitive and fragile, in need of protection from the ‘corrupting’ influences of the outside world.

Colonial ideals over the autonomy and self-determination of indigenous populations imply that these societies are only valuable if they remain in a static, museum-like state.

But suspending a tribe like the Marubo in time is as much about control as the purported internet ‘enforcement’ it seeks to counter. In the end, the response to Starlink’s remote satellites says more about modern society’s concern for its own fading dream, than its grief for an ‘eroded’ culture.