1969
50% of the Surui die
from sicknesses, following the 1st contact with white man
Dark is the trail of history... The seventies The first peaceful contact of the Surui with white people dates from 1969. Following this contact, about half of the Surui population died due to diseases introduced by the white people, so the ethnic group ended up counting less than 300 individuals within 3 years. The eighties The exploitation of wood began in 1987, on the initiative of white people who pushed the Indians to this illegal activity from which they collected a part of the economic profits. Huge wealth disparities between tribe members and internal clans came about, which were previously unknown of in the Surui social context.
The Suruí were tempted by this easy money, and were for a long time swindled on the prices of wood, unable to read or count at that time. The exploitation was realized by white lumberjacks, who cut down trees and then declared lesser volumes of wood which they paid to the Suruí ppeople a much lower price than that of the market.
Among the Suruí, very few families really benefited from this business, profits which were often quickly wasted in useless spending.
The nineties The Surui community organization "Metareila" with the support of local environmentalist organizations, such as Associação Kanindé and Proteção Ambiental Cacoalense (PACA), began in 1988 to fight the illegal exploitation of wood on native lands, The Surui started by dismissing a few leaders compromised in this traffic. For 15 years, on the instigation of a new generation of leaders, this fight against the wood industry has taken a poace. It was not simple and met numerous difficulties, even sometimes set backs. The habits taken meanwhile, the inferred needs, and external pressures led to the recurrence of wood sales.
With the apparition of economic inequities and the proximity of the town of Cacoal, a multitude of social problems appeared within the indigenous community.
Nevertheless the Surui managed to free themselves from the dependence towards lumberjacks, to return to traditional activities and to try to develop new activities less predatory (fish breeding, coffee and rice farming, arts and crafts production).
The beginning of the third millennium These last years, the Surui played, on the scale of Rondônia, an important role among the native communities (notably within inter-ethnic organizations) as precursors and as examples of an effective fight against the invasion and the destruction of indigenous forest territories. Although their success remains fragile and threatened, deforestation is not progressing any more on Surui land and 97 % of their 250.000 hectares of primary forest still remains untouched. Nevertheless certain border areas were profoundly affected, and forest has not regrown again there. Today the forest is playing an important role, symbolically and economically, in traditional activities, it is to that effect that the Surui have undertaken a reforestation program of their ancestral lands.
Some villages never gave in to deforestation. It is these villages, and most of all the village of Lapetanha, which took the lead the reforestation projec.
Association Aquaverde provides the Surui People financial means to develop their reforestation and related education projects, with respect of their dignity, their ancestral culture and their environment.
