Foto: Ana Vilacy Galucio, 2002


  • Autodenominação
  • Where they are How many

    RO219 (Siasi/Sesai, 2014)
  • Linguistic family


Demographically reduced, yet strong and warlike, the Sakurabiat are engaged in a daily struggle for survival and preservation of their culture and customs. Since their first contacts with non-Indians, they have suffered various types of exploitation. They have worked for a long time in rubber extraction, under the system of the barracão [rubber camp]. They were kept under the yoke of several lumbermen who invaded their territory and set up lumbermills. In their struggle for the demarcation of their lands, they were accused by the invaders of they themselves being the invaders of a land occupied by their ancestors from time immemorial. They won the battle for land, which has been demarcated and homologated since 1996, but there are still many other battles. Today, they relive the "stories of the old people", told by the elderly in the Sakurabiat language, at the same time they are concerned with discovering ways of going back to teaching the language to their children.