New Territorialities and Collective Ethnic Identities in the Brazilian Amazon Frontier, Rondonia State: Surui Paiter, Arara, and Gavião Indigenous Communities’ Land Claims and Alternative Cultural Landscapes

Abstract

Amerindian societies’ articulation processes in the Southern Amazon are issues of concern in this chapter that seeks to underpin ethno-political approaches as a conceptual foundation to shed light on the cultural and landscape changes. These Indigenous and landscape transformations in Amazonia have been observed along a historic continuum of anthropogenic westernized interventions on the rainforest and on its traditional peoples. Within this context, the recent advances of Surui, Arara, and Gavião communities in a process of ethno-development are investigated. These native peoples inhabit the Amazonian rainforest in Indigenous lands located in the State of Rondonia. The realities are analyzed within geographical conceptual categories and interpretation paradigms. The methodological tools used for data collection are literature review, toponymic inventory, and fieldwork carried out from May 2009 to May 2013. It is worth noting a revival of these societies, as part of a historical struggle to find ways of rescuing and keeping their self-confidence and seeking to reaffirm their traditional identity in face of the threats posed by internal migration waves taking place in the 1970s. This human mobility was triggered by government policies as strategies to integrate the Amazon into the rest of the country backed by geopolitical motivations. A set of policies for regional development has caused negative environmental impact with large-scale deforestation and negative cultural impacts on autochthonous people in Rondonia. However, Indigenous communities investigated also create in this historical process, alternative cultural landscapes in a specific territorial context.