Chief Almir Surui « Children of the Amazon

Chief Almir Receiving Death Threats

Posted in Amazon, Chico Mendes, Chief Almir Surui, Deforestation by Kevin Kanarek on July 8th, 2011

In Brazil this past month, there has been a dramatic escalation of the threats against Chief Almir and other leaders who stand with him in opposing new changes to The Forest Code. Legislation currently being considered by the Brazilian government would reduce the protections in place against further destruction of the forest. These changes would greatly increase the amount of land that can be legally logged and may also provide retroactive amnesty for illegal logging.

Earlier in July, Chief Almir traveled to the city of Brasilia with 11 other Surui leaders to meet with the National Indian Foundation (FUNAI), the branch of the Ministry of Justice responsible for Indigenous affairs. So far, the local FUNAI office in Cacoal has not responded to their requests for help and protection. According to Almir, the most recent threats are from wildcat loggers (torieros) who view him and other Surui leaders as obstacles to their continued illegal logging of protected lands, including the Sete de Setembro extractive reserve.

There is a long history of danger to environmental activists in the Amazon region, far from the centers of Brazilian government. This was brought to the world’s attention 23 years ago with the murder of Chico Mendes. Mendes, a rubber tapper and environmental activist, had forged an alliance between the rubber tappers and indigenous peoples for sustainable development in the Amazon. In 1988, after receiving death threats, he was assassinated at the order of a local rancher. Since then, many hundreds more have been killed.

This danger has intensified most recently with the conflict over the proposed changes to the Forest Code. In May, a prominent Brazilian conservationist and his wife were killed in the Amazon. Joao Claudio Ribeiro da Silva and his wife Maria do Espirito Santo were found murdered inside the nature reserve in the state of Pará where they had worked for the past 24 years promoting the eco-friendly cultivation of nuts, fruit and rubber. In this case as well, the victim had warned of repeated death threats against him by loggers and cattle ranchers. Other recent victims include Adelino Ramos, a farmer and leader of the Movimento Camponês de Corumbiara (Corumbiara Peasant Movement) in the state of Rondonia.

These killings may not linked or the work of the same forces. But they are a reminder that anyone who poses a serious obstacle to the exploitation of timber and other natural resources in the Amazon will risk deadly reprisals. Please express your support for Chief Almir. We have to pressure the authorities to take this matter seriously, and to protect those who protect the forest.

To protest the Forest Code and the gutting of Brazil’s rain forest protection laws, visit www.avaaz.org
More information on Chief Almir’s current efforts on the Amazon Conservation Team’s Brasil site

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Chief Almir in Fast Company’s list of top leaders

Posted in Amazon, Chief Almir Surui, Indigenous Peoples by Kevin Kanarek on June 20th, 2011

In June, Fast Company magazine included Chief Almir in its list of the 100 most creative people in business for 2011. As leader of the Surui tribe, he has worked with Google Earth and with other organizations and indigenous leaders to resist the destruction of the forest, and to find creative and sustainable solutions for the future of the Amazon.

“The message I want to send is, Let’s Amazonize the world,” he told the magazine hrough a translator. “Let’s help save the forest. Do what is within your reach, to your capacity; that is the responsibility of each of us.”

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Article about Chief Almir in Der Spiegel

Posted in Amazon, Chief Almir Surui, Children of the Amazon, Deforestation, Indigenous Peoples, Surui by Kevin Kanarek on June 12th, 2010

This week, the international edition of the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel ran an in-depth profile of Chief Almir and the story of the Surui tribe. It includes a detailed description of the Surui Carbon Project and 50-year plan, and some recent events regarding the monitoring and protection of the forest. Just last week, the Surui intercepted three trucks from the neighboring state of Mato Grosso as they were about to drive off with illegally harvested mahogany.

An interesting sidenote: the Surui have invented a word for Google in their language: “ragogmakan,” meaning “the messenger.”

And a touching view of a generation gap that spans two worlds: Almir’s interactions with his 87-year old father, Marimop.

Read the article
Download the PDF file

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Working with the Surui

Posted in Amazon, Carbon, Chief Almir Surui, Deforestation, Indigenous Peoples, Surui by Vasco van Roosmalen on April 26th, 2010

I attended with Chief Almir the COP15 Climate conference Copenhagen. There, with the help of Google Earth Outreach and in partnership with Dr. Jane Goodall and the Jane Goodall Institute, Chief Almir presented in front of four heads of states and numerous business and NGO leaders a Google Earth tour showing the work that his people are doing to help mitigate climate change.

Knowing how far the Surui have come since the loss of over 90% of their people after first contact only 40 years ago —this gives us hope and reminds us that it is possible to turn things around, given the right determination and willingness to work together.

I was born in Holland. My father is a biologist and when I was six weeks old, my parents moved from Holland to a traditional indigenous village in the rainforests of Suriname where I spent my first years. After spending more time in the rain forests of French Guiana, my parents immigrated to Brazil where we lived in Manaus in the heart of the Amazon.

Chief Almir and Vasco at Copenhagen

I first met Chief Almir at a USAID Environment meeting in Manaus in 2004 where we had just presented the results of the Amazon Conservation Team’s mapping work with other tribes in the Amazon. After that first meeting it took another year for us to begin the process of working together and in 2006 we were able to help the Surui people map their own lands as part of their 50 year plan for their future and to provide a basis for their management plan for the Surui forests (please see related stories in Smithsonian Magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Washington Monthly and Mongabay on Almir Surui and ACT’s mapping efforts.

Ever since then, we have expanded our partnership with the Surui thanks to the support of donors like USAID, the Overbrook Foundation and others. We have seen their capabilities grow to take on ever more complex projects that benefit their people and strengthen their protection of their forests. It is our aim to work with the Surui and the other partners to replicate the results and projects pioneered with them with other indigenous groups in the Amazon and beyond. Just in the Brazilian Amazon, indigenous lands cover over 20% of the forest and their inclusion and effective participation is crucial to any solution to end large-scale deforestation.

Vasco painted with jenipapo root by the Waura indians in the Xingu Reserve

The Documentary “Children of the Amazon” gives the viewer a first-hand look into the issues facing forest peoples in the Amazon today in a way few other movies have done. Denise Zmekhol’s account of her return to the Surui tribe is breathtaking. I hope that it can help move more people to reflect and to take action.

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The Story of “Children of the Amazon”

Posted in Amazon, Chico Mendes, Chief Almir Surui, Children of the Amazon, Deforestation, Film, Indigenous Peoples, Rubber Tappers, Surui by Denise Zmekhol on January 1st, 2010

I traveled to the Brazilian Amazon on several occasions between 1987-1990 to assist on television documentaries. During my journeys, I had the opportunity to visit many Indigenous communities, always with my camera by my side. What caught my eye were the children. Born to parents who had relied on the rainforest for their survival, these children were growing up surrounded by new ways—ways that were destroying the forest.

I was also drawn to the children of the rubber tappers…the people who harvest the wild rubber trees. The trees they relied on were also being cut down. I photographed the legendary rubber tapper Chico Mendes and his family. Chico had become renowned the world over for his nonviolent resistance movement to protect the rainforest.

15 years later—and a world away—I returned to these slides, which were never printed, never shared. The images brought back a particularly searing memory: a phone call from Chico in December 1988, asking me to film his funeral. I told him he was crazy, he wasn’t going to die, he had too much work to do. Two weeks later he was shot dead by a rancher. Stirred by faces of the children in my photographs and haunted by Chico’s untimely death, I was inspired to travel to the Amazon again—this time, to make a movie.

While I expected change, I was not prepared for the extent of it. So much of the forest had been destroyed. My response to the loss is the creation of Children of the Amazon — a tribute to a people struggling to save their forest home. But the goal of the film is more than to bear witness. I hope to offer insight to a distant and remote land while simultaneously drawing connections to our own lives. For we are—all of us— Children of the Amazon breathing the same air, walking the same planet, and in some sense that we have yet to understand, sharing the same fate.

~ Denise Zmekhol

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Chief Almir Receiving Death Threats

Chief Almir in Fast Company’s list of top leaders

Article about Chief Almir in Der Spiegel

Working with the Surui

The Story of “Children of the Amazon”

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