Are there not enough poor?

The Nukak Maku tribe, discovered in Columbia in 1988, now faces extinction in both physically and culturally. In recent years, the tribe has been forced from their forested land where they lived an uninterrupted nomadic life of hunting and fishing. Now they live in a government sponsored camp, and are forced to rely on insufficient government food rations. Between the change in their diet and contracting diseases previously unknown to them, their population decreased from about 2,000 at the time of discovery to a meager 600 persons. Not only are they physically dying out but their culture is also being lost. Introduction to the modernity of Columbia and the reliance on government subsidies has started to change the tribe’s culture. Many of the elder tribesmen worry if their traditions will be carried on to the next generation and if there will even be a next generation.