英文外刊精读丨亚马逊丛林的游牧民族危机

This story appears in the October 2018 issue of National Geographic magazine.

BRAZIL by Scott Wallace

巴西 作者：斯科特·华莱士

• 斯科特·华莱士（Scott Wallace）：作家、电视制片人，拥有二十多年担任国内和国际摄影记者的经验。

At Posto Awá, villagers enjoy a morning bath. The red- and yellow-footed tortoises they’re holding will probably eventually be eaten. 在 Posto Awa，村民们享受着早晨的沐浴。它们所捕获的红脚和黄脚龟可能最终会被吃掉。

The tread marks in the blood-red earth are deep—and fresh. Tainaky Tenetehar climbs off his dirt bike for a closer look. 血红色的大地上留下的胎痕又深又新。泰纳基·特内特拉尔从他的摩托上爬下来仔细观察。

dirt /dɜːt/ A dirt bike is a type of motorbike that is designed to be used on rough ground. (在粗糙路面上骑的)摩托车

“From this morning,” he says, with the conviction of a veteran tracker attuned to any sign of human movement in these lawless borderlands. “今天早晨留下的，”他说道，作为一位经验丰富的追踪者，他能辨认出任何在这些无法无天的边境地区的人类活动迹象，因此他很确信这一点。

veteran /ˈvɛtərən/ A veteran is someone who has served in the armed forces of their country, especially during a war. 退伍军人 You can use veteran to refer to someone who has been involved in a particular activity for a long time. 经验丰富的人

Through binoculars, he scans the rolling hills of fire-scorched savanna that lead out to a tree-crowned ridge in the distance. Here, on one of Brazil’s most hotly contested frontiers—where denuded scrubland pushes up against old-growth forest and private homesteads breach the boundaries of Indian land—the tire tracks bear a singular, ominous meaning. 通过双筒望远镜，他扫视着绵延起伏的山峦，那是一片烧焦的稀树草原，通向远处的树冠山脊。在这里，在巴西竞争最激烈的前沿地带之一——在这里，裸露的灌木丛与古老的森林相互对抗，私人住宅侵犯了印度土地的边界——轮胎跑道有着一种奇特的、不祥的含义。

breach /briːtʃ/ If someone or something breaches a barrier, they make an opening in it, usually leaving it weakened or destroyed. 突破 [正式]

“Loggers,” Tainaky says. The enemy. “伐木工“，Tainaky说。敌人。

Tainaky, who also goes by his Portuguese name, Laércio Souza Silva Guajajara, turns to his companions, four other Guajajara tribesmen, as they dismount road-beaten motorbikes. The patrol forms a motley crew: patched jeans and camouflage and aviator shades and bandannas to shield their faces from the ubiquitous dry-season dust. Bearing an equally modest array of weapons—a single-shot hunting rifle, a homemade pistol, a few machetes dangling from cinched waistbands—they call to mind a strange, cross-genre film. Think Mad Max meets The Last of the Mohicans. Tainaky的葡萄牙语名字是Laercio Souza Silva Guajajara，他转向他的同伴，另外四个Guajajara部落的人，当他们从被公路撞坏的摩托车上下来的时候。巡逻队组成了一群形形色色的人:修补过的牛仔裤、迷彩服、飞行员墨镜和大手帕，以遮挡干燥季节随处可见的灰尘。他们拿着同样简陋的武器——一支单发猎枪，一支自制手枪，几把弯在腰间的弯刀——让人想起一部奇怪的、跨流派的电影。《疯狂麦克斯》遇见了最后一个莫希干人。

patch /pætʃ/ A patch is a piece of material that you use to cover a hole in something. 补丁 camouflage /ˈkæməˌflɑːʒ/ Camouflage consists of things such as leaves, branches, or brown and green paint, which are used to make it difficult for an enemy to see military forces and equipment. (军事) 伪装

patrol /pəˈtrəʊl/ A patrol is a group of soldiers or vehicles that are patrolling an area. 巡逻队 Patrol is also a verb & a noun. 巡逻

ubiquitous /juːˈbɪkwɪtəs/ If you describe something or someone as ubiquitous , you mean that they seem to be everywhere. 无所不在的 [正式]
aviator /ˈeɪvɪˌeɪtə/ An aviator is a pilot of a plane, especially in the early days of flying. (尤指早期的)飞行员 [老式]

“Shall we go after them?” Tainaky asks. “我们去追他们好吗?””Tainaky问道。

Going after illegal loggers here has become the hallmark of patrols like this. They’ve set logging trucks ablaze, seized weapons and chain saws, and sent irate loggers packing. Patrol leaders, the 33-year-old Tainaky among them, have received multiple death threats. Some patrolmen use fake names to mask their identities. Three were murdered in one month’s time in 2016. 在这里追捕非法伐木者已经成为像这样巡逻的标志。他们点燃了伐木卡车，缴获了武器和链锯，并把愤怒的伐木者打发走人。巡警队长，33岁的Tainaky也在其中，已经收到多次死亡威胁。一些巡警使用假名来掩盖他们的身份。2016年，三个人在一个月内被谋杀。

ablaze /əˈbleɪz/ Something that is ablaze is burning very fiercely. 熊熊燃烧的

irate /aɪˈreɪt/ If someone is irate , they are very angry about something. 愤怒的

If you send someone packing , you make them go away. 打发 (某人) 离开 [非正式]

They belong to a hundred-member, homegrown force of indigenous volunteers who call themselves the Forest Guardians. This group and others like it have sprouted up in recent years to meet a rising tide of illegal logging that is decimating protected woodlands in the eastern Amazonian state of Maranhão, including the 1,600-square-mile Arariboia Indigenous Land. Along with the forests, the wild game that has sustained the Guajajara’s hunting culture for generations is vanishing. The lakes that give birth to their rivers and streams are drying up because of deforestation. Fish and birds are dying off. 他们隶属于一支由100人组成的本土志愿者队伍，自称森林卫士。近年来，这个组织和其他类似的组织如雨后春笋般出现，以应对不断增长的非法砍伐浪潮。非法砍伐浪潮正在摧毁亚马逊东部马兰浩州(Maranhao)受保护的林地，其中包括1600平方英里的阿拉里波亚(Arariboia)土著土地。随着森林的消失，几代人以来一直维持着瓜加哈拉狩猎文化的野生动物正在消失。由于森林砍伐，产生河流和溪流的湖泊正在干涸。鱼和鸟正在灭绝。
indigenous /ɪnˈdɪdʒɪnəs/ Indigenous people or things belong to the country in which they are found, rather than coming there or being brought there from another country. 本土的; 当地的 [正式]

deforestation [ di:,fɔri'steiʃən ] the removal of trees 采伐森林

If something springs up , it suddenly appears or begins to exist. 冒出; 涌出

A fire set by settled Awá clears manioc fields outside the government post of Juriti. They practice a mix of farming, fishing, hunting, and foraging, whereas isolated nomadic Awá live mainly by foraging and hunting. 由定居的阿瓦点燃的大火清理了法学家政府职位外的木薯田。他们从事农业、捕鱼、狩猎和觅食的混合活动，而与世隔绝的游牧部落主要靠觅食和狩猎为生。

set fire 纵火

The stakes are certainly high for the Guajajara, but they’ve adopted effective survival strategies since their first bloody contacts with outsiders centuries ago. Most of them know the ways of the outside world; many have lived in it. Far more dire is the plight of another tribe, with which they share the Arariboia reserve: the Awá. Several bands of Awá nomads—the easternmost isolated, or “uncontacted,” people in the Amazon—roam the woodlands in the core of the territory, living in a state of near-constant flight from the whine of winches and chain saws and, in the dry season, the smoke of wildfires. 对瓜贾贾拉人来说，风险当然很高，但他们自几个世纪前与外人第一次血腥接触以来就采取了有效的生存策略。他们中的大多数人知道外面世界的方式;许多人住在那里。更可怕的是另一个部落的困境，他们与阿瓦人共享阿拉里波亚保护区。阿瓦游牧民族的几个部落——最东端与世隔绝的，或称“与世隔绝”的，生活在亚马逊地区核心地带的森林里——在干燥的季节里，远离绞盘和链锯的呼啸声，远离野火的浓烟，几乎一直在飞行。

stake /steɪk/ If something is at stake , it is being risked and might be lost or damaged if you are not successful. 得失难料

Confined to a shrinking forest core, the Awá are especially vulnerable. But even in the still largely untouched expanses of rain forest straddling Brazil’s western border with Peru, isolated groups must live on the run to escape the depredations of illegal logging, gold prospecting, and now drug trafficking. All across the Amazon Basin, in fact, threats to the security of the estimated 50 to 100 isolated and uncontacted tribes—perhaps some 5,000 people in all—are rising. These groups represent most of the world’s remaining isolated tribes. The only so-called uncontacted tribes known to exist today outside the Amazon are in Paraguay’s Chaco scrub forest, on the Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean, and in western New Guinea, Indonesia. The numbers may seem small, but indigenous-rights advocates say there is something much larger at stake: the preservation of the last vestiges of a way of life that has all but disappeared from the planet, one that has survived apart from our industrial economy. 由于森林核心面积不断缩小，阿瓦河尤其脆弱。但即使是在巴西西部与秘鲁接壤的热带雨林中，那些与世隔绝的部落也必须四处逃窜，以躲避非法采伐、淘金和毒品走私的劫掠。事实上，在整个亚马逊流域，估计有50到100个孤立的、与外界隔绝的部落——可能总共有5000人——面临着安全威胁。这些部落代表了世界上剩下的大多数孤立的部落。目前已知存在于亚马逊之外的所谓与世隔绝的部落只有巴拉圭的查科灌丛，印度洋上的安达曼群岛，以及新几内亚西部和印度尼西亚。这个数字可能看起来很小，但土著权利倡导者说，这其中有一个更大的利害关系:保护一种生活方式的最后遗迹，这种生活方式几乎从地球上消失了，这种生活方式在我们的工业经济之外幸存了下来。

confine /kənˈfaɪn/ To confine something to a particular place or group means to prevent it from spreading beyond that place or group. 将 (某事物) 控制 (在某地范围内)

confined to 受限于
vulnerable /ˈvʌlnərəbəl/ Someone who is vulnerable is weak and without protection, with the result that they are easily hurt physically or emotionally. 易受伤害的

“When an ethnicity or a human group disappears … the loss is immense,” indigenous-rights activist Sydney Possuelo says. “The face of humanity is left more homogenous, and humanity itself more impoverished.” “当一个民族或一个人类群体消失……损失是巨大的，”土著权利活动家西德尼·波苏埃洛说。“人类的面貌变得更加同质化，人类自身也更加贫困。”

immense /ɪˈmɛns/ If you describe something as immense , you mean that it is extremely large or great. 巨大的

impoverish /ɪmˈpɒvərɪʃ/ Something that impoverishes a person or a country makes them poor. 使贫困

impoverished adj. 贫困的

An Awá hunter returns home with a small brocket deer. Sometimes hunters see signs of the isolados,their isolated brethren. As many as a hundred Awá still live as nomads in the Amazon forest, despite increasing pressure from illegal loggers and settlers. 一个猎人带着一只小鹿回家。有时，猎人们看到的是孤立的同胞。尽管来自非法伐木者和定居者的压力越来越大，仍有多达100名阿瓦人以游牧民族的身份生活在亚马逊森林中。

本文节选自国家地理官网，翻译注解来自“英语公塾”。

仅供英语学习，不代表个人观点。