'On our own territory'

San Jose del Guaviare, Colombia – Jedeku Njibe, a greying man in his 50s with a muscular build, gazed up at the dense canopy of the Amazon rainforest.

Silently, he raised a blow gun to his lips and exhaled in a swift, sudden puff.

Seconds later, a large monkey fell through the foliage, landing on the forest floor where Njibe’s son and nephew rushed to retrieve it. Later that night, they would sit together around a glowing fire and share a meal reminiscent of the ones Njibe had eaten as a child.

It was a moment that symbolised what Njibe's decades-long struggle had been about: returning to a way of life he and other Indigenous Nukak had been forced to abandon.

For centuries, the Nukak had lived in isolation in the Amazon rainforest that blankets Colombia's south, sustained by hunting and gathering.

They were once considered Colombia's last remaining nomadic tribe.

But as outsiders press further into the Colombian Amazon, they have encroached on Indigenous lands, destroying the forest and threatening the Nukak's traditional lifestyle.

In the 1980s, settlers and armed rebels started to invade Nukak lands in large numbers, bringing violence and diseases that decimated the tribe.

Survivors were forced to flee. Njibe, a teenager at the time, was among them.

Now, more than four decades later, Njibe and other Nukak leaders are reclaiming the lands that were taken from them and attempting to resume their traditional lifestyle.

“We want to live peacefully,” said Njibe, shifting between Spanish and his native Nukak language. “We want to live on our own territory.”

The Nukaks' plight is closely tied to the future of the Amazon, which scientists warn is at risk of transforming into a savanna due to the combined effects of deforestation and climate change.

Keeping the forest intact is also critical to the Nukak, who depend on the jungle for survival.

But the remote Nukak Maku reservation, which was created in 1993 to protect the Nukak and their lands, has become one of the most deforested Indigenous territories in the country.

As of 2024, more than 47,000 hectares (about 116,000 acres) — or about 5 percent of the reservation — have been cleared, according to the Foundation for Conservation and Sustainable Development (FCDS), a Colombian NGO that is helping the community reassert its sovereignty.

Vast tracts of the forest have been levelled to make way for cattle ranching and the cultivation of coca plants, the base ingredient in cocaine.

But returning the reservation to Indigenous stewardship could improve the lives of the Nukak as well as the forest itself, said Teresa Mayo, a senior researcher at Survival International, an advocacy group for tribal peoples.

“It’s the same fight,” said Mayo. “If there is no forest, there are no uncontacted peoples. But it also works the other way around. We can see through satellite images that the best protected lands are Indigenous lands and, most concretely, uncontacted people's land.”

Initial contact

Many of the Nukak trace their current circumstances to 1988.

That year, a tiny group of weary Nukak emerged from the dense forests near Calamar, a small town founded by settlers.

The sight of nearly 30 naked individuals from an unknown tribe, their heads shaved and their faces streaked in bright red paint, made national headlines and alerted the country to the Nukak’s existence.

Njibe, about 15 at the time, was among the group that walked out of the forest that day.

Until then, Njibe had only known life in the rainforest alongside his clan of roughly 70 members. He described his childhood, spent playing in the rivers and picking fruit, as “peaceful".

As nomads, the Nukak hunted with blowguns carved from palms and climbed trees to harvest wild berries. At night, they slept on handmade hammocks. During the day, they roamed the forests in search of fishing lakes or gardens they left hidden among the Amazon's dense groves.

But in the latter half of the 20th century, that lifestyle became increasingly precarious, as more and more outsiders began to breach the Nukaks' forest home.

First, it was the United States-based evangelicals who encroached on their territory in the late 1960s to convert the Nukak to Christianity.

Then came the ravages of an internal armed conflict in Colombia that began in 1964 and continues to this day.

Farmers displaced by the fighting turned to the Amazon, staking claims to large swaths of forested land. Meanwhile, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a Marxist rebel group, saw in the Nukak territory a new hideout with more drug routes to control.

Njibe recalled the men of his clan warding off outsiders with poisonous darts. But their efforts failed to contain the colonisation, and a health crisis erupted.

It’s unclear how the unknown disease reached Njibe’s clan, but in 1988, when it did, the impact was swift. About 40 members died, Njibe said, recalling how they fell sick and died within days. Among the dead were his father and several of his sisters and brothers.

Only about 30 clan members survived: Njibe, his mother, a few elders and a handful of children.

“There was hardly anyone left to tend to the children,” recalled Njibe. “I was afraid.”

The disease was later suspected to be a common respiratory illness like influenza.

With their clan decimated, the survivors wandered the jungle for days in search of fellow Nukak communities. Eventually, they reached the settler town of Calamar. More Nukak soon followed.

But as more Nukak reached Calamar, the disease spread more rapidly. In total, an estimated 40 percent of the Nukak population died from contact with outsiders.

Today, about 1,000 Nukak remain, leaving their tribe on the brink of extinction.

Returning home

About 70 percent of the Nukak population remains displaced from their ancestral lands, according to the FCDS.

Most families have been pushed into sedentary lifestyles, settling in makeshift camps on the edge of towns, where addiction and child sexual exploitation became widespread.

Others have settled on small plots in rural areas, where tensions with settlers flared over land disputes.

“The settlers took over the land as if it were vacant. They say there were no Nukak, but what happened was that the Nukak got sick and left,” said Njibe.

In the most remote reaches of the Amazon, where the Nukak reservation is located, the Colombian government has little presence.

The Nukak, therefore, have few legal protections from settler violence when they try to reclaim their lands.

But in recent years, Nukak members like Njibe, tired of waiting for government action, resolved to return on their own.

The idea gained traction in 2020, when several clans retreated into the jungle for fear of the COVID-19 pandemic.

But after returning to their relative isolation, the clans considered staying for good. They called on nongovernmental organisations like FCDS for support.

At that time, Njibe was living on a small farm inside the limits of the Nukak Maku reservation.

Even within the reservation, decades of colonisation had razed large swaths of the forest. Grassy pastures dotted with cows had replaced the Amazon's towering palm trees.

Deforestation had increased in the wake of a 2016 peace deal between the government and the FARC. The rebel group previously limited deforestation in the Amazon in order to use its dense canopies as cover against air surveillance.

But, as part of the deal, FARC — the largest armed rebel group at the time — agreed to demobilise. A power vacuum emerged in its place.

According to FCDS, powerful landowners quickly moved into areas formerly controlled by the FARC, converting the land into cattle pastures.

Armed dissident groups who rejected the peace deal also remained active in the area, charging extortion fees per cow.

“The colonisation process has caused many [Nukak] sites to be either destroyed or absorbed by settler farms,” said a FCDS expert who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation.

Still, in 2022, the FCDS forged ahead with a pilot programme to support seven Nukak communities as they settled deeper into the reservation, where the lush forest still remained. There, the Nukak hoped they could revive a more traditional, if not completely nomadic, way of life.

But many of the expeditions to identify permanent relocation sites failed.

Initially, Njibe hoped to move to a sacred lake inside the reservation that he recalled from his childhood, but once he arrived at the site, he found that it was now part of a ranch.

When he asked the settler who ran the ranch for permission to stay there, the rancher rejected his request, and Njibe was forced to choose another place to live.

He considered returning to a forested area — about 24 hectares (59 acres) wide, roughly the size of 33 football fields — that he considered his childhood home.

But that too lay within a ranch. This time, however, the settler in question, who Njibe said was more sympathetic to his land claims, allowed him to stay.

Defending the rainforest

Njibe named the area WimPena Chaana, and in 2023, he established a small community of 16 people there. They resumed a traditional way of life, albeit with some modern adaptations.

Njibe's community built homes in WimPena Chaana, first using materials like palm fronds and later adding zinc roofs to better withstand the rain.

There remains no electricity, though nearly everyone now owns a cellphone that they charge at a store downriver. Children play in the cool waters but also pass the time with gaming apps and movies.

But one thing hadn’t changed: The residents of WimPena Chaana rely on the jungle, as their ancestors did.

In 2023, National Parks launched a restoration programme in the Nukak reservation, employing the people of WimPena Chaana to plant native tree species on 15 hectares (37 acres) that had previously been cleared for coca cultivation and cattle ranching.

The programme aims to restore the Amazon’s biodiversity but also takes into account the community’s needs, said Jenny Cueto, the regional director for Colombia's national parks department in the Amazon.

For instance, the initiative has grown native seje palms, which produce a dark violet berry similar to acai. The fruit is a staple of the Nukak diet and can be processed into a beverage, while the palm's fronds can be woven into traditional baskets and shaped into hunting darts.

The Nukak traditionally harvest those materials without felling the tree. Instead, they scale the palms to collect the berries, even though the trees can grow as high as 25 metres (82ft).

Once the fruit is consumed, the leftover seeds are disposed of in the forest, where they sprout new groves.

For Cueto, the project is an example of how to “strengthen conservation based on ancestral knowledge".

Seventeen-year-old Santander Wubu is one of the programme participants. When asked what he enjoys most about living in WimPena Chaana, the teenager responds with a smile: It's the fruit.

“There is a lot of fruit everywhere,” Wubu said. He lists the different varieties that grow near his home: There are trees full of sweet and creamy mamey apples, not to mention the brown ucuye, which hides a honey-like liquid in its centre.

Due to the programme’s success, Cueto said that it’s now being replicated in three other Nukak communities: Pepepena, Candejerenina and Chekamuj.

A future in the forest

But the future of WimPena Chaana remains uncertain, and it is unclear whether Njibe and his neighbours will be able to stay.

Last year, Njibe was resting on his hammock when the sound of a chainsaw echoed through the jungle. He and his son, Heider, rushed towards the noise and found workers from the neighbouring ranch felling trees and hauling the lumber away.

Njibe confronted them, warning them that continued logging would destroy the forest. “We had to scold them,” Njibe said. The workers dropped the timber and left.

But the confrontation led to new tensions. In February, the rancher who claims the land WimPena Chaana sits on ordered Njibe's household and another family to dismantle their homes, saying it blocked a trail.

The two families complied and rebuilt their homes elsewhere on their plot, but Heider suspects the demand was retaliation for protecting the forest.

“He's going to have a conflict with us about the logging because we don't like him to extract more wood,” Heider explained.

Without government presence in the area, Njibe’s community understands that, at any moment, the rancher or a nearby armed group could force them out.

In Colombia, there is a legal process to help communities displaced by the ongoing armed conflict return home.

But the government has not been able to support the Nukak’s return to the reservation with state programmes or improved security, leaving them vulnerable to displacement once again.

According to Marcela Tobon, director of Akubadaura, an Indigenous lawyers’ collective, federal agencies and contractors have said it is too dangerous to work in the area, given the presence of armed rebel groups.

“The institutions have said that, if their security is not granted by the Ministry of Defence, they cannot enter the territory. That has been their argument for not supporting their return when communities have already been doing so without any guarantees,” said Tobon.

While Colombia’s highest court has ordered the government to protect the Nukak’s ancestral lands and plan their return, its rulings have not been fulfilled.

The Victims’ Unit, a government agency responsible for overseeing the return of displaced communities, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Meanwhile, ongoing tensions have left the community of WimPena Chaana uneasy.

Seated beside a plentiful garden of yucca and plantain outside his home, Njibe lamented how settlers continue to tear down the trees that his community needs to survive.

But he remains determined to stay. For now, he believes this land offers his community the best chance at a better life.

“I want my children to have their own territory so that they won’t have to run somewhere else like I did,” said Njibe.

This story was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center.