AquaverdeNews

Chief Almir Surui was guest speaker, together with Sir John Attenborough at the Google headquarter on the 10th of April 2008, during the London launch ceremony of Google outreach program.

The last thing you’d expect an Amazonian tribe who have only recently had contact with the modern world to do is to team up with a technology giant; but that’s exactly what the Surui people have done.

The Surui tribe have partnered with Google, who they refer to as ragogmakan - meaning “messenger”, to help monitor illegal logging in their traditional lands. Google is known as ragogmakan as they hope the company’s massive reach will help to alert the world to the dire situation in their part of the Amazon.

There’s not just trees and animals at stake here, but the Surui people themselves are faced with extinction. The situation has become so bad that loggers regularly murder indigenous peoples if they get in the way - the Surui chief is constantly facing death threats.