Photos? Check. Lost Tribe? Not So Much.

Back in May, the Associated Press and other news services circulated several images of an indigenous group in a remote area along the Brazil-Peru border. As the story went, the group had never been seen before.

Only they had. Or at least their existence wasn't unheard of. José Carlos Meirelles, the Brazilian Indian Protection Agency (FUNAI) employee who took the photos seen around the world, has come clean, saying that the tribe's existence has been known for nearly a century and that he'd sought out the isolated tribe.

According to the Guardian:

[T]he Brazilian state of Acre offered him the use of an aircraft for three days. 'I had years of GPS co-ordinates,' he said. Meirelles had another clue to the tribe's precise location. 'A friend of mine sent me some Google Earth co-ordinates and maps that showed a strange clearing in the middle of the forest and asked me what that was,' he said. 'I saw the co-ordinates and realised that it was close to the area I had been exploring with my son – so I needed to fly over it.'

For two days, Meirelles says, he flew a 150km-radius route over the border region with Peru and saw huts that belonged to isolated tribes. But he did not see people. 'When the women hear the plane above, they run into the forest, thinking it's a big bird,' he said. 'This is such a remote area, planes don't fly over it.'

What he was looking for was not only proof of life, but firm evidence that the tribes in this area were flourishing – proof in his view that the policy of no contact and protection was working. On the last day, with only a couple hours of flight time remaining, Meirelles spotted a large community.

'When I saw them painted red, I was satisfied, I was happy,' he said. 'Because painted red means they are ready for war, which to me says they are happy and healthy defending their territory.'

So what was the motive for circulating these photos far and wide? Environmental protection, plain and simple. Meirelles has called the release of the photos and video were "powerful and indisputable evidence to those who say isolated tribes no longer exist." And Survival International, the organization that released the images along with FUNAI, says the release of the images forced Peru to re-examine its logging policy in the border region where the tribe lives.

Update: A story in the Washington Post shows Survival International on the defensive, with the London-based group saying it had never described the aforementioned tribe as "lost" or "unknown." Strangely, though, they shouldn't have to be on the defensive about that point—the original articles about the tribe referred to it primarily as "unphotographed" and "isolated."