Fulni-ô

The Fulni-ô, also recorded as Carnijós or Iatês, are an Indigenous people of the Pernambuco sertão, settled by the Ipanema River around the town of Águas Belas. They took shape from the regrouping of several shattered tribes of the region, and colonial documents from the 1700s show them contesting the cattle ranches that Portuguese settlers pushed into their interior lands.

Their language, Yatê, meaning our speech, is known in two close dialects, Fulniô and Yatê; its classification is disputed between the Macro-Jê family and a language isolate, and it is one of the very few native tongues of northeast Brazil to remain in continuous use.

The Fulniô dialect is reserved chiefly for the ouricuri, a three-month religious retreat of secret rites, through which the community kept its traditions intact under colonial pressure.