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From the anthropological information provided by Nimuendajú, the State of Rondônia had a reasonable number of “forest-dwellers” from various ethnic groups who inhabited the region. Besides the traditional peoples, the occupation of Rondônia by non-Indians was always motivated by economic interests. The first flux of non-Indians occurred in the 18^th Century with the search for indigenous slave labor. The second, in the 19^th Century, was motivated by the search for gold. At the end of the 19^th Century, the rubber boom began, which lasted until the bust in 1910-1920. After the Second  World War, there was a resurgence of the rubber boom along with mineral exploitation, especially of cassiterite and gold in Amazonia, attracting a new flow of migrants which occupied the region, provoking conflicts with scores of indigenous peoples. Thousands of Indians died in combats and/or epidemics and had their lands invaded.

After the 1940s, the first government colonization projects began. In the beginning of the 60s, construction began on highway BR 364, which "ripped" the state from Southeast to Northwest, and was executed by the Polonoroeste Program (Integrated Development Program for the Northwest of Brazil) and financed by the World Bank. Following the route of the highway, in the early 1970s, large government colonization projects brought thousands of agriculturalists from the south and southeast of Brazil, which in effect simply relocated to the region the political impasse around the issue of agrarian reform.

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In the specific case of the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau, although there are reports since 1909 on the indigenous occupation of the region, including records of conflicts and location of villages, official records were only made after 1976, when three malocas were located between the headwaters of the Rio Branco and the Cautário and Sotério, near the Pacaás Novos mountain range, and one near the Souza Coutinho stream, at Mutum rapids.

The area of Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau occupation went from the valleys of the Madeira (to the north), Machado (to the east), Guaporé (to the south) rivers and on to the Mamoré (to the west), according to available historical records and the oral reports of the Indians. Since at least the beginning of the 20th Century, the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau have struggled against the fronts of expansion that invaded the region.

Long before official contact of these groups, the first concrete proposal for delimitation of the indigenous reserve was made in 1946, when the government of the Territory of Rondônia was informed of indigenous occupation of the entire basin of the Jamari River and the basin of the Floresta River up to the Pacaás Novos mountain range. According to the document prepared at that time, the decision of November 26, 1946, was favorable. “In 1946, after the massacre caused by Mr.Manoel Lucindo of the villages of the Oro-Towati and the various counter-attacks on the part of the Indians, the SPI [Indian Protection Service] decided to interdict the area included in the São Luiz Rubber Camp, and this act was communicated through official letters 30/64, 32/64, 33/64, to Mr. Manoel Lucindo, to the Government of the Territory of Rondônia and to the Credit Bank of Amazonas”.

Various interdictions in the area were proclaimed until, on March 24, 1984, through Decree 176/E, the President of the Funai established a work group to study the identification and definition of the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau and Urupa-In indigenous area. On July 9, 1985, the area was declared to be the permanent possession of the Indians, through decree 91.416. In 1990, President Sarney revoked the decree but, on October 29, 1991, President Fernando Collor homologated the administrative demarcation of the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau indigenous area.

The Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau were contacted by the Funai on March 10, 1981, in Alta Lídia, today called Comandante Ary. On the occasion 250 people were contacted. In 1984 the Funai located three villages; but in 1986 there were in all a total of eight villages. At that time, the Comandante Ary post had already been visited by more than 150 Indians, and the Funai calculated that there were approximately 500 Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau.

The Jupaú state that there are still three other groups who have not been contacted, who live in the region of the Muqui River, Cautário and S. João do Branco. The report made at the time mentioned the existence of several villages still without contact, in which it was calculated that there were around 1000 to 1200 isolated Indians in the Indigenous area. Research shows that the group identified as Mamõa worked without pay for the rubber-gatherers; the  Amondawa were surrounded by invaders and requested the intervention of the Funai, who didn’t know where their villages were located; A Jupaú woman identified as Kanindé commented that her mother and sister had been captured by the rubber-boss Alfredo. Their descendants even today tell how their mother died and sister continued in the power of the invader, and that she would like to go back and live in the village, even though she was not raised among the Jupaú.

The chief of the Ajudância [Assistance] of Guajará Mirim, of the Funai, concluded in his report dated May 3rd, 1988 that the indigenous reserve should not be created in the place that the Indians occupied, for this would be harmful to the rubber-bosses and rubber-gatherers. At that time, the Incra [National Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform] was already creating the Costa Marques Land-titling Project, with a clear position in favor of the non-Indians. However, the report alerted to the need for the Funai to send a backwoodsman to the area to make contact before the rubber-bosses did.

In 1980 11 huts and gardens were located on the Jamari River and near the fields of Comandante Ary (Alta Lídia). Camps were also found on the left bank of the Urupá, near BR 429, and in 1984 a village on the Urupá and another in São Miguel; besides the camps on Tracoá hill, on the Jamari/Candeias divide, on the Ricardo Franco, Muqui, Igarapé Pombal, Jarú, Cautário, São Miguel, Ouro Preto, Água Branca and in the Pareci/Pacaás Novos mountain range (three settlements with various malocas inside the Pacaás Novos Park, 7 kilometers distant from one another).

Invasions

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In the history of the Indigenous Land, there have occurred successive invasions, both by lumbermen and rubber-bosses, and by peasants in search of lands. The invasions intensified after the 1980s and persist until today. The low level of fiscalization by the responsible public agencies and the isolation of the area have contributed much to worsen the situation. There are frequent denunciations, despite the government of Rondônia having signed an agreement to fiscalize the invasions on the Indigenous Lands. One recent example is what occurred in April, 2003 with the invasion of 5,000 non-indigenous people who called themselves the “League of Poor Peasants”. Their removal took place weeks later and involved a joint operation of various public agencies — Federal Police, the Funai, the Ibama, the Incra, the Forest Police Battalion and the Secretary of Public Security of the State of Rondônia — and the NGO Kanindé.

In the second half of the 1980s, after the paving of BR-364 the commercialization of lumber with the south of the country intensified. The selective exploitation of good quality timber in the State of Rondônia made the stock of these species diminish considerably on the private properties, becoming available only at long distances from the beneficiary industries. With that, the stealing of lumber on indigenous lands, principally the good quality lumber (mahogany and cherry), also became more intense. Various cities with scores of lumber mills are installed on the outskirts of the Indigenous land. It is estimated that 90% of the mahogany and 80% of the cherry wood that are brought to lumber industries of Rondônia come from Indigenous Lands or Conservation Units.

Adding to the pressure of the lumber commerce, the population in the area around the Conservation Units is growing. As an electoral strategy, many municipalities were created in the State, part of them with no infra-structure and small population, and no power to raise money for their very survival. In 1991 the State of Rondônia had only 40 municipalities, today it has 52. The territorial area of several municipalities that have been created overlap by more than 50% inside the Indigenous Lands. In view of this reality, the tendency is for there to be ever greater anthropic pressure on the Indigenous Lands.

The Amondawa and Jupaú have been historically hostile to the economic colonizing fronts since the beginning of the 20th Century, living in conflict with the rubber-bosses and gold-panners. Over the last few decades, the struggle has been against the invasion by cattle-ranchers, agriculturalists, prospectors, and against the actions of the lumbermen who have stolen, over one decade, more than 500,000 cubic meters of lumber, mainly of good quality.

Over the last ten years, a large number of fiscalizing actions have been undertaken on the indigenous land and in the national park. The actions that have been successful, have led to the opening of scores of police inquiries, with the confiscation of nearly a hundred vehicles, including trucks and tractors. Most of these vehicles were returned to the infractors, in accordance with the legislation that leaves the accused as loyal depositary, while the process is being tried in court. But often the Indians have demonstrated their revolt against the decision of the judges and burned the vehicles so that they wouldn’t be returned to their owners. Many of these infractors have nevertheless returned to the area and continue stealing lumber.

The Disputed Burareiro Area

In the most recent history of the Jupaú, the Floresta River was the stage for a major conflict between Indians and non-Indians. Even after the Funai had notified the Incra that the region was interdicted for the Indians, the Incra issued 122 definitive titles to agriculturalists inside the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau indigenous area, creating a problem that still hasn’t been solved, with losses for the Indians, for the area has suffered from the plundering of its resources.

At the end of the ‘70s, the Geographical Department of the Brazilian Army was contracted by the Funai, to undertake the demarcation of the indigenous area, due to the complexity of the conflicts in the region and the size of the land to be demarcated. The Army in turn contracted a company to undertake the final work of physical demarcation. After several months had passed since the demarcation, the Funai still had not checked the limits of the area. When the backwoodsmen tried to find the demarcation markers and borderlines, they couldn’t. The demarcation borderline clearings had not been correctly done and the few markers that had been put in place had been ripped out by the invaders.

On November 11, 1980, the Incra illegally issued 113 titles in the southern part of the Burareiro Project, located within the Indigenous Land. In 1985, the MIRAD-INCRA recognized that most of the people who received titles were not living on the lots, that the occupation was precarious due to the lack of access roads and that the deforestation in the region had barely begun (Altamir Wolmann,  MIRAD/INCRA, 04.06.85). In the same year, the limits of the Indigenous Land were finally defined by Presidential decree and it was expected that the INCRA would resettle the people with titles in another region, thus respecting the indigenous land. But that did not happen.

In the Cattle-ranching and Forestry Plan for Rondônia (PLANAFLORO) and in successive Aid Memoranda of World Bank missions in Rondônia, the grave situation of  Burareiro was noted, but at the conclusion of the execution of this plan, no emphasis was given in the sense of finding a solution to this situation. The question was considered a legal problem to be settled only by the Funai. The agency, after much delay, in 1994 initiated a legal process against the Incra to nullify the titles on the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau indigenous land. The Court decision in 1996 was unfavorable to the Indians, for the Court interpreted that that the process initiated by the Funai should not be against the Incra, but rather against each of the 122 owners of Definitive Titles. Since most of these titles had already been sold to third-parties, this would this would result in a large number of legal actions to be taken against the title-holders, which would be unviable in the short and long run.

On April 27, 1995, in an inter-institutional meeting of the state government, a proposal was made that the remaining area (an area of 39,000 hectares proposal to be diminished) of the Karipuna Indigenous Land be used to settle, besides the 184 local invaders, the invaders of Burareiro and the 40 invaders of the Mequéns Indigenous Land. The Funai complied with the proposal, but the Incra and the State did not remove the invaders from the indigenous lands. Consequently, the invasions remained and new ones occurred in the excluded area of the Karipuna.

The court decision in 1996, regarding Burareiro, is being used in a distorted way by businessmen and politicians of the municipalities of Ariquemes and Monte Negro who are acting unfairly to stimulate invasion. In 2001, the Funai, Federal Police and Public Ministry, with support from the Jupaú indigenous association and the Kanindé association undertook the de-occupation of the northern side of the indigenous land, in which scores of invaders were taken to the central Penitentiary in Porto Velho. The representatives of two associations of invaders were indicted in legal processes. For the first time, the imprisonment of professional invaders of indigenous lands in Rondônia was obtained.