“His partnership with Google, which began in 2007, has enabled the tribe to create an online “cultural map” of the Surui with stories from the tribe’s elders that are uploaded onto YouTube, as well as a geographical map of their territory created with GPS — equipped smartphones from Google. In 2009, Google employees taught the Surui to use cell phones to record illegal logging on their land. Tribal members can now take photos and videos that are geo-tagged and immediately upload the images to Google Earth. Law-enforcement officials can no longer claim ignorance of the problem when evidence of the deforestation is publicly available online.”
This guy’s a badass.
I’m going to be the bearer of bad news here and talk about how despite all these efforts, loggers are (trigger warning: violence against women/children) relentless and brutal in their means to get what they want.
If you’re curious what sorts of things keep me up / make me cry when I’m just trying to go to sleep, much of it is this.
Some horrific and upsetting shit is happening in the Amazon. While these outreach publicity stunts by Google may mean well, in the grand scheme of it all these tribes and that nature are facing their very end, and we are living through that time in history.
Reblogged from erina|12 notes