The discovery of gold and diamonds in Brazil on the indigenous reserve of the Suruí people has triggered one of the greatest scrambles for precious metal and stones now occurring on Indian lands in the western Amazon. Complicating matters, the mining has been encouraged by some village leaders despite efforts by Almir Suruí, head of the tribe’s governing council, to persuade them to oppose it. The government demarcated the 2,470-square-kilometer (953-sq-mile) Suruí reserve in Rondônia state in 1983. The Suruí occupy 27 villages and number 1,400 in total. Almir Suruí’s difficulty in getting other leaders of his tribe to keep miners out is in many ways the result of similar trouble he has had in persuading them to bar the tribal... [Log in to read more]