In the Brazilian Amazon, the açaí tree is part of the ancestral history of society and regional culture, and it is important to conduct research on the conservation of açaí trees in the region. The present proposal aims to study, through an ethnobotanical approach, how human communities (Caxiuanã, Pedreira and Laranjal), inserted in a context marked by the actions of IBAMA, relate to the açaí tree in the National Forest (FLONA) of Caxiuanã (Melgaço/Portel, Pará). To better understand the definition of a National Forest, we resorted to the System of Conservation Units (SNUC, 2000). The work demonstrates that the populations suffered a process of acculturation in the beginning of the 1960s with the implementation of policies of human eviction from the region, during the implementation of the FLONA. Despite this, the populations that resisted and continued to live there adapted to new patterns of behavior in relation to natural resources, as well as the açaí tree. This work revises some theoretical paradigms that conceived human beings as agents of destruction of nature, incapable of living harmoniously with it. If the largest forest in biodiversity in the world is still standing, it owes a lot to the people who built their cultural and material history over the centuries in the Amazon, maintaining an ecological relationship with nature, including with the açaí tree. Through oral history we were able to recount, from the point of view of the inhabitants of Caxiuanã, the facts that occurred during the creation of the forest reserve and how the Brazilian Institute for Forest Development (IBDF) - currently IBAMA - acted with the populations, which allows us to understand the meaning that they themselves attributed to the creation of the national forest. The vision of the authorities responsible for environmental conservation in the region of Caxiuanã, regarding the small farmer, was pessimistic and negative, because these authorities conceived man as a destroyer of wildlife, and the peasant was incapable of living ecologically with nature. Finally, we verified the importance of the açaí trees for food, medicinal and architectural use in the communities visited. Furthermore, we could observe a higher incidence of types of açaí in the region, according to the family producers, being the purple or black açaí with 50% of the total, and in second place the white açaí with 46%.
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