Amazon expert killed by tribesman’s arrow

BRASILIA: A top expert on isolated Amazon tribes in Brazil was killed by an arrow that struck him in the chest as he approached an indigenous group, friends and a police witness said this week.

Rieli Franciscato, 56, had spent his career as an official in the government’s indigenous affairs agency, Funai, working to set up reservations to protect Brazil’s tribes.

On Wednesday, as he moved close to a hitherto uncontacted indigenous group, he was hit by an arrow above the heart, near the Uru Eu Wau Wau reservation in the forest in the Brazilian state of Rondonia near Bolivia’s border.

Kanindé Ethno-Environmental Defense, and association he helped found said the indigenous tribe had no ability to distinguish between a friend or a foe from the outside world.