International Day of the World’s Indigenous People

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Today is the UN's International Day of the World’s Indigenous People.

Here's something useful to read / pass along:

Survival International has named three destinations holidaymakers should avoid:

• Barefoot Resort, South Andaman Island, India

Barefoot India has established a tourist resort near the edge of the reserve created to protect the Jarawa tribe. The resort puts one of the world’s most recently-contacted tribes at risk from swine flu and other diseases to which they are likely to have little immunity.

• Central Kalahari Game Reserve, Botswana

The Botswana government is promoting the Central Kalahari Game Reserve as a tourist destination, and is allowing a safari company to build a lodge that will use large amounts of water. But it refuses to allow the Bushmen to use a single water borehole inside the reserve.

• ‘First contact’ expeditions, West Papua

Treks to meet isolated tribes in West Papua, Indonesia – including one offered by American ‘adventurer’ Kelly Woolford to an area where tribes supposedly ‘have had no contact with the outside world’ – could, if true, have catastrophic consequences.

Survival have produced a tourism advice leaflet with more info.