And Chau seemed to be more of a narcissist, wanting to be important. I suspect he thought it would make him famous or something to "conquer" the tribe.

There's a real arrogance in the attitude that everyone has to believe your way. Anyway, if "missionaries" really wanted to gain some souls, they'd do better to work in their own countries. There are far more "unbelievers" here in the United States, for example.

great harm.

I mean, is there a shred of doubt?

...and not because of the monumental stupidity of getting himself killed. Such isolated tribes are incredibly robust for having survived in isolation so long, but are still incredibly fragile to exposure to the outside world.

Even if Chau's monumentally stupid stunt hadn't resulted in his proof of Darwinism, it still would have been devastating to the tribe just like it was to native people all over the world.

Keep your white man's burden to yourself. It's never a good idea and it always causes harm.

Everything related to their attempts to convert people to Christianity is an unmitigated harm. Duping desperate (or merely curious but ignorant) people into believing a load of bunk is clearly a waste of their time and energy. Encouraging them to give money to those who already have more than they do is abominable. Training people not to think critically/rationally has a range of collateral damage associated with it.

There's no charity work which missionaries sometimes do as a way of insinuating themselves into a community which could not be done by a secular charity. So even when they do good things, it comes unnecessarily attached to a big streaming pile of nonsense.

And then we have disease, disruption of family and community structures, loss of languages and cultures, etc.

They have already dismissed the importance of the identity and the culture of the targeted group and have hoisted themselves into undeserved righteousness.
It is so sad that this continues after all the lessons history has for us to learn from.

depends on whether change is desired or needed. In most cases, the existing culture and religion were doing OK. The missionaries and their hangers-on bring trinkets, new diseases, and an alien religion with them. All too often, the disruption caused by those new things ends up destroying the existing culture over time.

In sum, typically it is a negative exchange. When the Spanish Catholics came to the Americas, it only took a couple hundred years for the existing cultures to be completely wiped out. They brought soldiers with them, enslaved the indigenous peoples, converted them to Christianity by force, changed their diets, their way of life, gave them European diseases, and then discarded those peoples.

The same things happened almost everywhere Christianity came through missionaries. The missionaries were the first intruders, but were followed by the exploiters, who quickly forced the indigenous people to give them whatever natural resources they had. Slavery, murder, genocide, and displacement were the rewards for those people.

So, I can't see any benefit to missionaries, really. Their promises were false, but their exploitation of indigenous peoples were very effective, typically wiping out entire cultures and so allowing their fellow countrymen to come in and steal their lands.

Ugly crap all around.

Then they kill you.

When it comes to spiritual matters, a MYOB approach is the way to go, IMO.

In other words, butt out!

The answer is yes.

Thank you.

to read a bit of history.

How about Central and South America?

Canada?

Africa?

Australia?

Every indigenously inhabited island in the Pacific?

Virtually the entire Far East?

Ever read any of that history and how well it turned out for indigenous populations? I get you think their immortal souls are better off, but do you really think that's fair compensation for genocide? Because it's sounds like that's what you are suggesting.

Besides, finding a positive example of missionaries is going to be a tough search. Finding negative examples is a breeze, of course. Odd, that.

I mean, missionaries teach people to read. That's cool. So the recently converted can enjoy a good book while they're dying of the fucking flu.