The items were discovered Saturday thanks to a small but determined indigenous search team that spent the last seven days on the front lines of the hunt for the two missing who both had, in different ways, defended the indigenous cause. On Saturday morning, a handful of volunteer investigators from the Matis Native team found something they suspected might belong to the missing. . A Matis volunteer said they decided to enter a secluded spot outside the Itaquaí River after hearing what they thought sounded like someone hitting an aluminum canoe. “They felt it, imagined it and went rowing [their canoes]”, Said Binin Matisse. “Indigenous people can feel these things as a spirit. [It was like] a forest spirit that says, “There is an object in there.” That’s what the natives think. “ A large group of indigenous volunteers – accompanied by members of the Brazilian military police and a Guardian reporter who has joined the indigenous search teams – returned to the site shortly after 4 p.m. and found a number of objects floating in the murky brown waters of the area. Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira Photo: Guardian composite / Gary Carlton After locating a blue tarpaulin that was tied to a tree and identified as belonging to the Javari Native Association, investigators found a piece of clothing that activists identified as belonging to Bruno. “It’s Bruno’s! It belongs to Bruno! ” shouted the researchers as they examined the object. A few minutes later a pair of dark pants – which people who knew Pereira also recognized as his own – emerged from the water before disappearing from view. Federal police officers were called and, arriving Sunday morning, closed the narrow water canal leading to the area and deployed a team of medical examiners. The medical examiners entered the flooded forest with boats and confirmed the finding. On Sunday night, a federal police statement said the items recovered included a pair of trousers, a pair of boots and a Pereira-owned health card and a backpack full of clothes and a pair of Phillips boots. A firefighter holds a telephone with a picture showing the moment a backpack was found during a search for indigenous expert Bruno Pereira and British journalist Dom Phillips. Photo: Edmar Barros / AP Indigenous experts and witnesses said the discovery would have been impossible without the efforts and in-depth knowledge of local Indigenous research teams searching the jungles and rivers of the Javari area for traces of the two men. “It’s the Justice Jungle League,” said a military police official who was searching for the two men, who were returning from a four-day reference trip when they disappeared early last Sunday. “Without their knowledge and without them we would never have found any of this,” said Fabrizio Ferreira Amorim, an indigenous defender who helps coordinate the investigation mission. Phillips, a longtime Guardian contributor, was in the Javari region – home to the world’s largest gathering of non-contact tribes – as part of a report on an environmental book. On Saturday, his Brazilian mother-in-law admitted that he no longer believed the two men would return home. “He is no longer with us,” he wrote on social media. “Their souls are united with those of so many others who gave their lives to defend the rainforest and the indigenous peoples.”
