Menire, a Kayapó woman and her work

[...] we produce beaded bracelets for our festivals and for orders from the Kabu Institute, and make paintings on the children, our husbands and relations. 

And also, at certain times of the year, we spend a few months collecting Brazil nuts, work we share with the whole family. We leave the village and set up camp in the forest to gather the nuts that fall to the ground.

Besides gathering nuts, we have access to many other resources such as native fruits, açaí (Kamêrêkàk), fruit (Kamôkti), tonka beans (Kren Yky), jatoba (Môj), genipap (Mrôti), cocoa (Kubenkrãti), Oxi, (Krem) and others found in the forest.

Another activity in our culture that is also the responsibility of women is roofing the houses. Our husbands do the walls and we cover the roof with straws.

We produce many things, and part of our production helps the families' income. These days, we also need resources to help with our home and to buy the things we need for ourselves and our children.

Our source of income comes from tonka bean, chestnut, and craft projects. These projects are developed by the Kabu Institute, an association created by the Kayapó Mekrãgnoti, which serves 09 villages of the Baú and Menkragnoti indigenous lands.

The Kayapó art project helps us develop our work with beads and fabric painting. This project has been ongoing for over 9 years.   

We have already created many new products like shoes, pillows, bags, necklaces, earrings, paintings, dresses, t-shirts, and other things that help us earn more income.   

Even with all this effort, as there are over 300 women in the villages, when the revenue is shared out, each of us is left with only a little.

Ôk, in the Kayapó language, means painting. All the women in the village know how to paint, because we learn when we are children. We do face painting, full body painting, chest, arms, and legs.

Our body paintings are different depending on the person who is painted. 

There are paintings for children, women, men, the old, single women, and for the first child. 

The reasons for the paintings are quite varied, being most commonly they are for initiation and naming festivities, women's festivals and various rituals such as funerals, preparation for war, fishing, expeditions into the forest, or just to make ourselves beautiful.

Painting is a lot of work, but we really enjoy doing it. Depending on the job, it takes a long time to do.    

We have recently started painting on fabrics and that is good because it is also a source of income. 

Our paintings are drawings that remind us of the animals, the plants, and everything around us.

We really enjoy working with beads, to earn money to help our children. It's what we like to do most because they’re light, not heavy like chestnut and tonka beans.

We buy clothes and slippers for ourselves and our children. We also buy some food items like rice, beans, sugar, coffee, and spices.

Sometimes we go into town to shop and when we can't go, we ask someone who is going there. If we have to go to the hospital with a child, we buy a plate, a spoon, and a diaper for the child.

We also make earrings, but it takes a day to make each pair of earrings.  Thin bracelets take a day and the thick ones take two days to finish. A short necklace is made in one day and a long necklace takes five days.

We like colorful beads, the more colors the better. Each woman has a way of working and making different designs with the beads. There are images taken from our culture, like tortoises and gourds, but also football teams and other things, which are also beautiful.

In the past, when we had no contact with the Kuben (non-indigenous people), our food was fruit, game, and fish. We used to have no agriculture, but our elders say that one day a star turned into a woman and she brought cassava and other food from the sky and taught us how to plant.

Having a field is very important. It's where we work with our whole family, clearing the forest, burning, sewing seed, planting, taking care of the field so that the pig doesn't eat the crops, and then go and harvest, because each crop has its time.    

When it's time to plant the fields we work hard, we open the fields, clear them, set them on fire, and then plant them. The men open the field and the burning is done with our help. Planting is a job for the whole family. Maintenance, harvesting, and food preparation, on the other hand, is a job for women.   

There is plenty in our forests and our rivers, so there is no shortage of food. We have a lot of game, like pigs, deer, armadillos, agoutis, tapirs, curassows, macaws, monkeys, and other animals that serve as food.

Our husbands, sons and sons-in-law hunt, but we prepare what they catch. Today there are women who fish alone or in groups, but hunting is for men.

Besides game and fish, other foods are gathered in the forest, such as Brazil nuts, tonka beans, açaí, and babassu, as well as various fruits, such as jatoba, fruit, genipap, cocoa, oxi, and other fruits.   

The festival ends with the permission of the hostess, so that everyone can eat the food.