The Arara Karo live in two villages, Iterap and Paygap, both located in the southern part of the Lourdes Stream Indigenous Land, in Rondônia. Two-thirds of the Arara live in the first village, the rest in the second. The Gavião Indians, their traditional enemies, live on the same Indigenous Land. The Arara were contacted at the end of the 1940s, when hundreds of them died from contagious diseases and the survivors went to live in the rubber camps of the region. This resulted in the Arara becoming totally involved in the non-indigenous way of life, but their shamans are still recognized by all the Indians of the neighboring regions as being very powerful.poderosos.