Via the first page of The World Without Us, the sad story of the Zápara. More at NativeWeb and UNESCO's list of oral tradition.
The smallest Indigenous group in the Ecuadorian Amazon is the Zápara. Often they are called "Zaparos," which refers to a type of basket, while "Zápara" in their own language means "person of the forest." Their history demonstrates the devastating impact of Western civilization as their numbers collapsed from about 200,000 people in 39 different groups at the arrival of the Europeans to approximately 200 people today living in five Zápara communities in Ecuador in addition to two other related groups in Peru.
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