I read a book by Arthur C Clarke called "The Challenge of the Spaceship", or maybe it was "The Exploration of Space." Whatever.
At any rate, he said something that really stuck with me.

His point was that regardless of what other benefits and advantages space travel might provide mankind, the greatest (in his opinion) was that it would separate mankind into little communities far from one another, in very different environments. Each would face different challenges, with relatively limited contact with one another. Humanity would be adaptable, but it would not be a uniform adaptation to one environment, we would become diverse and flexible, and explore many different paths and histories. It would be impossible to exterminate us. No single catastrophe, like climate change, could wipe us all out.

He felt as a global civilization we would become culturally inbred and overspecialized, like thoroughbreds or show dogs, and we would be unable to adapt to changes in our environment. With one language, one culture, one religion, one philosophy, one way of seeing the world, we would have no way of realizing how genetically and culturally we had degenerated, because we would have no one else to compare ourselves to.

By Neolithic times, we had conquered every environment on this planet, the deserts, the forests, the alpine and Arctic wastes, the tundra and the selva, the savanna and the steppes and the scattered archipelagos of the Pacific. And we did it with stone tools, and in small bands.

Even with all our technology, we can't live in any of those places today without being plugged into the entire global techno-industrial process. We can visit the bottom of the sea, or the icecap in Antarctica, or the surface of the planets, but we have to bring everything we need with us. We have forgotten how to live off the land.

Our ideal condition as a species, the one that offers the best insurance for long term survival, is the ability to live in multiple environments, but to still be able to communicate with and even travel to others, so our knowledge can be shared. That's how life and evolution works. Specialization is NOT for insects, they are the most varied and diverse taxon on the planet--and the most successful. WE are the ones who are becoming trapped in an evolutionary dead end.

The global village is starting to look awfully small and monotonous. A Swedish office worker is not that different from a Samoan one. You're right. There may be nothing we can do for these little pockets of aborigines, no matter how much we may want to help and treasure them. Eventually they will be absorbed, and hopefully, they will prosper by it. But we may not be doing them any favours.