Rare video has emerged purporting to show the meeting of a filmmaker and his crew with a previously uncontacted tribe.
Jean-Pierre Dutilleux, a Belgian author and director, released footage in 1993 of what he claimed was the first ever encounter captured on film with members of the Toulambi tribe in Papua New Guinea.
It was also claimed that this was the group’s first encounter with white people.
This is reflected in the footage, with the tribe gathered around and touching Dutilleux’s skin in awe and fear.
Eventually, the filmmaker gains their trust and shakes hands with one of the group members after giving him a box of matches.
You can watch below:
The video was recently shared on Reddit where the poster claimed that the tribe thought the camera crew were ‘ghosts’.
Thousands of people have commented on the encounter, and while some found it fascinating, others were quick to point out that the tape is a forgery.
“This charming video is a fake,” one user said. Jean-Pierre Dutilleux, the white man in the video, is a Belgian filmmaker.
“The Toulambi tribe is made up of Papua New Guineans. This phony “first meeting” between natives and a white-skinned visitor was filmed around 1993.
“Before that, these excellent ‘actors’ had already met with at least three ethnologists: Pierre Lemonnier in 1985, Jadran Mimica in 1979, and Pascale Bonnemère in 1987.
“Anthropologist Pierre Lemonnier, who denounced the documentary as fraudulent in an article for the French newspaper Liberation, studied the Papuans of the district of Marawaka for over a decade and claims that the supposedly ‘unknown tribe’ lives less than four days by foot from an administrative center with teachers, a landing strip, a radio, nurses, and, of course, a preacher (it’s important for the natives to know that they’re going to hell).
“They also use the Vailala River to travel to the coast, where they exchange handmade tableware made from tree bark for modern tools.”
The production was described as ‘untruthful, racist, and revolting’ by Lemonnier.
“In the case of the ‘Toulambi,’ which I discuss at length here, this has resulted in my being attacked by journalists and summoned to a legal court to provide ‘proof’ of the absence of any unknown tribal group in a region where Jean-Luc Lory of the [CNRS] and I were doing research amongst communities more than 20 years ago,” the anthropologist later said.
The film’s authenticity is unknown, though historical records appear to support it – or, at the very least, the Toulambi tribe had previously been contacted.
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