Adrian Cowell’s epic, ten-year-long series begins with a tale reminiscent of the American Wild West. A Brazilian settler brings his family to live deep in the Amazon, in Indian territory. Two of his sons are murdered and another is kidnapped by a renegade Indian tribe. For four years, a government expedition searches for the Indians and the child. Meanwhile, the colonists’ expansion continues to encroach on the Indians’ land. The series follows landless peasants as they are lured to the forest with promises of free land and big harvests. As the forest is slashed and burned, the crisis is taken to the US Congress, where under pressure, the World Bank finally changes its policies toward Brazilian development.
The first film follows the saga of two colonists, Chico and Renato, and a never previously photographed Indian tribe, the Uru Eu Wau Wau. Renato is a landless peasant who has been lured into the rainforest with promises of free land and big harvests. He and his neighbors slash and burn the forest to clear the land, only to discover that the soil is so poor their crops will not grow. In retaliation for the settlers' incursions, the Indians kidnap Chico's 7-year-old son. As the little boy's family searches for the kidnappers, the government tries to make peace with the Indians. By the decade's end, the fate of Chico's boy is learned; an epidemic kills many of the Indians; the settlers' farms have failed; and more than 15% of the forest has been destroyed.
