An isolated tribe of the Central American rainforest, regarded by Chakotay's father Kolopak as the living ancestors of their people and linked to the visiting Sky Spirits.
The Rubber Tree People are a small indigenous community who still live deep in the forests of Central America in the twenty-fourth century, avoiding the technology of the outside world. Chakotay's own tribe, settled on a colony world, traces its descent from them.
They are seen in the flashbacks of Tattoo. Kolopak brings his fifteen-year-old son to Earth to find the tribe, and Chakotay, impatient with tradition, makes it clear he would rather be anywhere else. The Rubber Tree People wear a mark on the forehead, which Chakotay adopts years later in his father's memory.
On a Delta Quadrant world, Chakotay meets the Sky Spirits, aliens who visited Earth some forty-five thousand years ago and gave a gift to the ancestors of the tribe, bearing the same mark.