David Good, an American man whose mother was forced to abandon him to return to her Amazonian tribe, has reconnected with her after years of uncertainty.

Growing up, David did not know his mother’s location and told friends she had died in a car crash, according to the New York Post.

In reality, his mother, Yarima, was a member of the Yanomami tribe of Venezuela, who married and fell pregnant to David’s American anthropologist father while he was on a study trip in the Venezuelan jungle.

David’s father, Kenneth Good, flew his young wife back to the States to give birth to to David, but she struggled to assimilate into the western world and made the difficult decision to return to her tribe.

“She knew the kids wouldn’t do well in the jungle,” Kenneth Good told the Post. “Babies get sick there. They die.”

Today, Yarima still lives with no electricity, plumbing, paved roads, currency or written language in a remote Amazonian village.

At the age of 21, after years of abandonment issues, David finally made the decision to visit her there.

It took him three years to save the money for an air fare and he made the trip in August 2011.

Upon arrival, he recognised his mother immediately and she was moved to tears when he spoke to her for the first time:

“I said, ‘Mama, I made it, I’m home. It took so long, but I made it.'”

David now works as an activist and founded The Good Project charity to support indigenous communities around the world.

You can watch amazing footage of his journey to meet his mother below.