Wallace (right), reporting from the depths of the Amazonian jungle for his new book "The Unconquered"

ICFJ’s Environmental Journalism Fellow Scott Wallace lost 25 pounds exploring the headwaters of the Amazon, but returned with the story of a lifetime.

In 2002, Wallace became a Ford Environmental Journalism Fellow. The International Center for Journalism (ICFJ), with sponsorship by the Ford Motor Corp., sent him to the Amazon region of Brazil to report on illegal logging of the rainforest and to teach environmental journalism to Brazilians.

The fellowship led to Wallace’s big break. National Geographic Magazine commissioned him to accompany an expedition to pinpoint the location of perhaps the last “uncontacted” tribe of Amazon natives, known as the “flecheiros,” or People of the Arrow. Wallace wrote a cover story for the magazine in August 2003 entitled, “Hidden Tribes of the Amazon.” That led to another Geographic cover four years later called “Last of the Amazon,” about the gradual loss of forest to logging, settlement, agriculture and roads.

And this October, his book on the expedition, "The Unconquered," is being published by the Crown Publishing Group.

Wallace (right), reporting from the depths of the Amazonian jungle for his new book "The Unconquered"

The expedition took nearly three months. The explorers cruised up the Amazon, paddled up tributaries, and finally slogged on foot into the forest. Eventually, they found one of the tribe’s settlements, but two expedition members went missing. Fearing their companions had been killed by the tribe’s deadly arrows, the expeditionaries braced for an all-out attack. They eventually found their missing men, made it back and reported what they had discovered so that the government could bar outsiders from entering this enclave.

Wallace credits the fellowship from ICFJ. “It was because of the Ford Fellowship and my recent reporting experience in Brazil that National Geographic saw fit to assign me to this incredible story,” Wallace said.

Author Sebastian Junger wrote that “The Unconquered,” is, "Riveting and brilliant...blessed with the pacing of a novel but carrying the great weight of world events. Journalism at its very, very best." 


Wallace is speaking about the book Nov. 3, 7:30pm at the National Geographic Society in Washington, and Nov. 7, 7pm at the Explorers Club in New York City.