Xavante

The xavante donīt use earrings but earsticks of different kinds of wood and get larger in circumference as they get older. They are given these at the age of 14 when they leave the bachelors hut in which they spent 5 years of solitairy life with a shaman. They have to endure 3 months in cold water in the river before they can receive the earlobe piercing. The boys and girls have various complex groups of age. If you want more information go to www.warã.org.br, their own website. They hav only been īdiscoveredī in 1946, after they have tried to avoid contact since the 17th century, because they were enslaved. They distrusted all these centuries the white man and hated his every move. Thatīs why today they are still wary of any approach of non Xavante, called waradzu. And they are entitled to this as no Brazilian rancher or multinational or missionairy respects their way of life.
I have had the luck to live 3 months with them and to be adopted by them in 1989 as a member blood brother of the owãwé clan in the village of Santa Cruz in the reservation of Kuluene.
My name is Alann De Vuyst, a Belgian artist, 45 years old and currently in Brazil and writing an on-line story in collaboration with Emmanoel Laleos, fellow of Royal geographical society, on the Xavante and other Brazilian aborigines at: http://www.phfawcettsweb.org