Tribe with Bruce Parry begins this weekend…
After more than a decade away from TV, filmmaker and indigenous rights advocate Bruce Parry returns to BBC Two. Across a three-part series he will travel to some of the most remote corners of the world to visit communities living radically different lives to our own.
Bruce believes indigenous knowledge and wisdom are needed more than ever. His return to the Beeb comes at a time when the world faces unprecedented environmental challenges, millions of tribal people have left their communities and the threats to those who remain are escalating. Against this backdrop, Bruce is visiting three extraordinary communities, diving deep into their traditional ways of life. He is the first foreign visitor to live within each community, and films much of his experience on his own camera.
After four days travel from the UK, Bruce visits the Waimaha people, who live on a remote tributary of the Amazon. Deep in one of least accessible regions of the Colombian rainforest, it’s a region of the Amazon that he’s never visited before.
After rubber tappers and missionaries nearly destroyed Waimaha culture in the 20th Century, Bruce is initially seen as an outsider and eyed with suspicion. He wants to learn about the Waimaha’s deep understanding of nature that allows them to thrive in such a remote region.
He eats foraged insects, drinks beer brewed with saliva and lives with a family who have recently lost their dog to a jaguar from the surrounding forest. The Waimaha use a powerful form of the psychoactive ayahuasca to connect with forest spirits who, they believe, are the protectors of their lands.
Bruce must win the trust of the community if he is to attend a sacred ritual where the psychoactive will be taken. To do this he is required to go through a series of purges, including snorting chilli, middle of the night river immersions and a vomiting purge to cleanse his stomach.
Tribe with Bruce Parry, BBC Two, Sunday, 30 March at 9 pm. Also, on the iPlayer
