Xerente (alternate Sherenté, Xerentes, and Xerénte) are an

indigenous people of Brazil Indigenous peoples in Brazil ( pt, povos indígenas no Brasil) or Indigenous Brazilians ( pt, indígenas brasileiros, links=no) once comprised an estimated 2000 tribes and nations inhabiting what is now the country of Brazil, before European con ...

living in

Tocantins Tocantins () is one of the 26 states of Brazil. It is the newest state, formed in 1988 and encompassing what had formerly been the northern two-fifths of the state of Goiás. Tocantins covers and had an estimated population of 1,496,880 in 20 ...

. The Xerente are a Central Jê people related to the

Xavante The Xavante (also Shavante, Chavante, Akuen, A'uwe, Akwe, Awen, or Akwen) are an indigenous people, comprising 15,315 individuals within the territory of eastern Mato Grosso state in Brazil. They speak the Xavante language, part of the Jê lang ...

. They maintained generally "peaceful" relations with outsiders from the nineteenth century onward. Their villages were traditionally built in a semi-circular fashion, but the society has largely assimilated Brazilian standards of organization. The Xerente creation myth is based on the duality of mythic heroes embedded in the sun and the moon, and this has resulted in a division between the exogamous moieties, with the sun moiety being called Doí and the moon Wahirê, each consisting of three or four clans. As of 2007 use of the native language among the 1813 members is universal, with most being monolingual until age 5. In 2010, once the Programa de Compensação Ambiental Xerente (PROCAMBIX), one of the first structured compensation programs for Indigenous peoples in Brazil, for the impact of the Lajeado Dam, had ceased, the Xerente attempted a class action suit to claim additional compensation for the dam's ongoing impacts. Following a lengthy court case, in 2013 a judge decided in favour of the dam's builders, Investco, an ad hoc consortium formed of the Rede Group, Companhia Energética de Brasília (CEB), and the multinational Energias de Portugal (EDP).

References

External links

Ethnologue
Indigenous peoples in Brazil Indigenous peoples of Eastern Brazil {{Brazil-ethno-group-stub