The Zo'é people are a native tribe in the State of

Pará Pará is a Federative units of Brazil, state of Brazil, located in northern Brazil and traversed by the lower Amazon River. It borders the Brazilian states of Amapá, Maranhão, Tocantins (state), Tocantins, Mato Grosso, Amazonas (Brazilian state) ...

, Municipality of Óbidos, on the

Cuminapanema River The Cuminapanema River is a river of Pará state in north-central Brazil, a tributary of the Curuá River. The river basin lies partly within the Grão-Pará Ecological Station, the largest fully protected tropical forest conservation unit on t ...

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

. They are a Tupi–Guarani people.

Name

They are also known as the Poturu, Poturujara, or Buré. The term "Zo'é" means "us," as opposed to non-Indians or enemies. The term "Poturu" is the type of wood used to make the embe'po

labret A labret is a form of body piercing. Taken literally, it is any type of adornment that is attached to the lip (labrum). However, the term usually refers to a piercing that is below the bottom lip, above the chin. It is sometimes referred to as a ...

s which they wear.

Language

The

Zo'é language Zo'é (Jo'é) is spoken by the indigenous Zo'é people of Pará, Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with ov ...

belongs to Subgroup VIII of the Tupi-Guarani language family.

Culture

All Zo'é wear the poturu, a wooden plug piercing the bottom lip. The Zo'é have a tradition where new fathers have the backs of their calves cut with the 'tooth of a small rodent'. The marriage rituals of the Zo'é are complex and not fully understood. It is not known how many wives or husbands one is allowed to have. Many women practice

polyandry Polyandry (; ) is a form of polygamy in which a woman takes two or more husbands at the same time. Polyandry is contrasted with polygyny, involving one male and two or more females. If a marriage involves a plural number of "husbands and wives ...

. One or more husbands may be "learning husbands": young men learning how to be good spouses, in exchange for hunting for the rest of the family.

In film

'' The Salt of the Earth'' documents the work of photographer

Sebastião Salgado Sebastião Ribeiro Salgado Júnior (born February 8, 1944) is a Brazilian social documentary photographer and photojournalist. He has traveled in over 120 countries for his photographic projects. Most of these have appeared in numerous press pu ...

including his photographs of the Zo'é.

Notes

External links