Introduction

Before the first contacts our People lived with the forces of the forest and our traditional culture, without having great problems. But when the white man arrived with the thought
of being owner of the land, the forest, the water, the rubber trees, the wood and other
natural resources, then they started to mess with our people and our traditional territories, taking away our right of being the guardians of our forests and live in peace.
The “Seringalistas” and “Seringueiros” (owners and workers of the rubber companies) had arrived in our forest establishing settlements in our sacred territories, opening colonies and roads, killing the animals to sell the leather, skins, taking away our trees, as the aguano (mahogany), cedar and many others, and especially extracting latex for rubber production.

Note: The Rubber

By the end of the 19th century the first wave of immigration to the Brazilian Amazon from the northeast of Brazil took place. It was caused by the North American and European industry and its beginning demand for rubber. The owners of the new rubber companies, the "Seringalistas", appropriated huge areas of rain forest for extracting the raw material for the rubber - the latex from the rubber trees ( Hevea brasiliensis, Braz.: Seringa). The Indians in the areas of Juruá and Purus tried to resist but didn’t have much of a chance with their bows and arrows. The new immigrants escaping from drought and misery, were even forced by this powerful Brazilian and foreign economic groups to fight against the indigenous peoples that inhabited that land: only ten out of the sixty indigenous nations that lived there survived and their population decreased dramatically. That was the "Correrias" (= running-around) - a group of about 50 gunmen assaulting an Indian village. As they generally were bachelors they killed only the Indian men and captured the women and made them their wives. This way most of the Indians were exterminated. Many also died from diseases like tuberculosis and measles, which before hadn’t occurred among them, and that the new immigrants had brought. The labour of the defeated Indians was used for road construction and rubber tapping. As time went by, the "seringueiros" –workers in rubber production- had to adapt to that new environment, learning from the ancestral traditions of indigenous peoples how to live in the forest, and join them in the resistance against the deforestation.

Correrias (running-around)

During many years we live a great slaughter, marked for a time of much violence against the Huni Kuin people, which after the contact was called Kaxinawá. Much bullet was spent and much blood spilled. Who escaped, escaped; who did not escape, was massacred by the bullets of the Winchester rifle, bore 22. And others had been delivered to the masters of the colonies, where they had started to work as cheap man power, farming, hunting, fishing, as canoeist, loading, piloting rafts and producing rubber.

The time of the ”correrias” (running-around) was initiated for 1877 rollback, when hundreds of employers and thousands of seringueiros ”workers” had started this settlement in a land that later would come to be known as the Federal Territory of Acre, in 1903. For many years, we survived held in the captivity of the ”seringal” masters; paying tax to remain in the forest, without the right to live in our traditional homeland, immemorially occupied by our people. Since then, our fight for the physical and cultural survival is advancing and moving backwards, but we continue living and magnifying our population, today considered to be the greater indigenous population in the Acre state.

Note: What/where is Acre?

Acre is the westernmost Brazilian state.
Neighbouring countries: Peru (S and W) and Bolivia (SW).
Neighbouring Brazilian states: Amazonas (N) and
Rondônia (E).
Population: 669.739 inhabitants (2005).
Area: 152.582 sq Km, about 55,000 sq mi.
Capital: Rio Branco with 305.731 inhabitants (2005).
Main rivers: Juruá, Tarauacá, Muru, Envira, Xapuri, Purus, Iaco, Acre.
The whole of Acre lies in the Amazon Basin. 93% of its territory is covered with tropical rain forest. Acre is divided in two geographical regions, which are the drainage basins of the rivers Juruá and Purús. The rivers of Acre are so-called white-water rivers, which (unlike the clear- and black-water rivers) carry murky, muddy waters, rich in minerals. Due to the regular flooding and the quality of the water, the soil at the shores is more fertile.

The Rights

The communities that had survived the running-around and the captivity of the rubber employers only could start to organize from the middle of the decade of 1970 when the Funai (Indian’s national foundation) started to identify and to delimit aboriginal lands. In this new time of the rights we were led by old shaneibu (sage) Sueiro Sales Cerqueira, called in our language Bane, that had earned as inheritance of its godmother a small piece of land named Fortaleza (Fortress).

In 1975 there was about 360 Kaxinawas in the River Jordão, a great part of them living in this small fortress, when a friend of the forest, one txai of our people, came to visit, and know us. Then he explained that we had right to have our demarcated lands, a right to a differentiated aboriginal pertaining to school education, a decent assistance of health for our communities, and that we would have to organize ourselves in accordance with our culture and traditions to gain these rights.

At this time many of our cultural traditions were falling apart. We were living as seringueiros,
working for the masters of the colonies established in our traditional territories, living in little huts of straw, diffused, and still paying tax to continue living in the forest. Working hard, in the captivity of the "seringalistas" masters and learning to speak Portuguese, without forgetting our proper language, hãtxa kuin.

Our bigger leadership, shaneibu Sueiro, travelled far, and together with other aboriginal representatives had visited authorities of our country, exactly to demand the right of living in the land traditionally occupied by our people, our ancestors. Their efforts had given results. Some friends, anthropologists, had come to make the first social/economical surveys of our people and to carry through the first studies of identification of our lands.

The works that we carry through in partnerships with these entities and the Funai had given good results. Thus we conquered the sacred right on parts of our lands, to continue speaking our language and still to fortify our traditional culture, our rituals, myths and dances, mainly the Katxa Nawa (celebration of harvest and fertility), the Txirin (ceremony of the royal Hawk), the Nixi Pae (sacred spiritual brew, also known as ayahuasca, daime and yage), the party of baptism of our people, called Nixpu Pimá, and still the knowledge that our old ones had preserved on the medicine of the forest and its medicinal herbs and plants.

The maintenance of our old agricultural seeds that until today we cultivate in ours farms of firm land and beach and preservation of weaving of cotton with sacred patterns (Kene) and ceramics on the part of our women. Keeping our traditional form of being men, women, children and old, all in getting a worthier and fair life in the forest.

Kene - Huni Kuin culture

Demarcations

Our first demarcated land was the Indigenous Land Kaxinawá of the River Jordão, in 1985, with 87.293 hectares, established in the medium and high course of this river. There the preservation of the nature is total and the deforestation is practically inexistent, for the happiness and joy of our people. Right after we conquer our first land, we manage to prepare our own bilingual teachers, health and agro forest agents, under the prompt of our assessors and friends of the Commission Pro Indian of the Acre ( CPIAcre).

In 1987, we create our proper legalized aboriginal organization, the Association of Seringueiros Kaxinawá of Rio Jordão (ASKARJ). The union of our people and the strength of our association motivated the fetching for sustainable economic alternatives, as the vegetal leather production and art crafts, a bigger diversification of the agricultural products to the regional market, as Peruvian beans, gramixó (brown sugar) and flour, beyond the implantation of agro forest systems.

From 1988, with the death of our friend and ally Chico Mendes, we helped to fortify and create the Alliance of the Peoples of the Forest. We developed common designs in partnership with the National Advice of Seringueiros (CNS), as in the designs supported by BNDES from 1989 to 2002, which destined resources for the creation and implantation of the Extractives reserves of the High Juruá, enacted in 1992, as well as the development of the communities surrounding aboriginal lands. In this period, we considerably magnify our rubber production, arriving to reach 36 tons for annual harvest.

Acre State – Protected natural areas

Note: The "development" of the Amazon - cattle raising

After the military coup in 1964 a policy took place in Brazil to stimulate big Brazilian and foreign companies to explore the natural resources of Brazil. Various governmental organizations for the development of the Amazon were founded. The first big development plan was realized between 1972 and 1974. Its aim was to implement huge cattle farms.

In the course of this policy the state credits to support the rubber companies were cancelled without advance notice. Suddenly enormous areas of rain forest that previously belonged to the rubber companies were for sale for very low prices. The buyers were usually cattle-raisers from the richer south of Brazil who became owners of huge ranches that way. In Acre it was mainly between 1971 and 1974 that the governor Francisco Vanderlei Dantas executed the economical policy of the military regime. Many areas didn’t even have a legal owner and the resident Seringueiros and Indians who were the legal possessors of the land often did not know about their rights or didn’t have the means to document them.

An important role within these appropriations was played by the so-called "Grileiros": speculators who usurped land through corruption, falsification and violent expulsion of the inhabitants of the forest and then sold that land to the cattle raisers. The Seringueiros tried to defend themselves. They organized the so called "empates", forming chains of people holding hands to inhibit the clearings or circling the group of workers who were in charge of the clearing and making their leader sign a document that would guarantee the suspension of the clearings. At that time the seringueiro’s union wasn’t yet strong enough, neither had they other possibilities to assert their rights. Many times the new landowners achieved with the help of their lawyers the title deeds. Between 1978 and 1991 more than 2.000.000 acres of forest have been destroyed in Acre. Every year more and more rain forest becomes pasture and seringueiros become dwellers of the poor districts in the cities...

New conquests

In 1993, with initial support of the WWF and the Prize Reebock of Human Rights, profit for the president of our association, Siã Kaxinawá, the ASKARJ bought two new lands in the river Tarauacá, Independência and Altamira, linked in the back of the right margin of this river with our two lands of the river Jordão. Identified in 1994 with the name Indigenous Land Kaxinawá of the Seringal Independence, it became the first aboriginal dominial land of the state.

Currently, the Huni Kuin population of the Jordão is magnified considerably.
Of the 360 Kaxinawá existing in 1975, when still we did not have right to our lands, we are today more than two thousand inhabitants distributed in three aboriginal lands, with extension of 107.483 hectares, already regularized for the federal government.

Today the Huni kuin occupies 26 villages in the rivers Jordão and Tarauacá, situated in these three aboriginal lands.

We continue defending better conditions of life for all. We aid the work for the creation of the first Extractives reserves for the seringueiros and other traditional populations of the Amazon, giving continuity in the fight of our friend Chico Mendes, who sacrificed his proper life to give visibility to the grievances against the forest and its native populations.

We deserve to have assistance to continue being Huni kuin, to preserve our culture and our forest, to have the respect of our communities. We know what we want of the life and we have conditions to develop sustainable economic activities in our aboriginal lands, without deforesting our forests, nor to pollute waters of our rivers and bayous, preserving areas of shelter of hunting and fish, conserving the trees, over all the mahogany and cedar, but negotiating with the market through our association forest and agricultural products and deep knowledge of our rich biodiversity, especially that one related with the traditional use of medicinal herbs and plants of the forest.

We can still contribute for the production of diverse none- lumber products, such as the production of rubber and vegetal oils, essences, seeds and medicinal herbs of our traditional knowledge of the forest.

We want to do our part!