The Akurio people were first contacted by outsiders in 1937, during
Conrad Carel Käyser's expedition to the
Oelemari River. The next year, , a Catholic missionary, who called them
Wama, contacted the Akurio again.
Claudius de Goeje published vocabularies of "Wama" recorded from these expeditions in his 1946 book
Études linguistiques caraïbes. No further contact was made until 1968, when some
Wayana people met a group of Akurio by chance, prompting missionaries to immediately begin resettling them into sedentary settlements, particularly the Tiriyó villages of
Kwamalasamutu and
Tepoe. This led to the rapid adoption of the Tiriyó language. Uncontacted groups of Akurio are thought to still live along the upper Oelemari and in the
Oranje Mountains, and may still speak Akurio without influence from Tiriyó. Sepi Akuriyó, one of the last surviving speakers of Akuriyó, went missing 2 December 2018, when a small plane carrying eight people disappeared during a flight over the
Amazon rainforest. The search and rescue operation was called off after two weeks. == Phonology ==