Brazil's last hunters tell settlers to leave jungle

Brazil's last hunter-gatherer Indian tribe, the Awa, handed a 40,000-signature petition to the Brazilian government yesterday, demanding the removal of illegal settlers from their land.

After a 20-year campaign, the mapping-out and marking of their land into a reserve, ordered by a judge last year, has been completed, but loggers and ranchers remain.

Fiona Watson of Survival International, an organisation that supports tribal peoples, said: "Now this demarcation has finished, the Brazilian authorities have to protect the area and stop the killing of the Awa." An industrial project

Only 300 Awa still remain and about 60 live uncontacted in nomadic groups in the Eastern Amazon. To'o, an Awa leader, said: "We live in the depths of the forest and we are getting cornered as the whites close in on us. Without the forest we are nobody. Without the forest, we will be extinct."