Dehumanization in the news

I find it a little disturbing how the authors of this article basically discuss the people in question -- an isolated tribe in far western Brazil near the Peruvian border -- as animals, not as human beings.  On the one hand the problems they face are much more similar to those faced by endangered animals than to anything else, but on the other... well, they're not animals.  No matter how isolated from society, how 'primitive' (and what an insulting word that is), they're still human beings.  And yet the rhetoric of dehumanization might just save them and their way of life.