Today most live by agriculture, hunting, fishing and gathering, and extract piassava fiber for income to buy goods from traders.

The Baré and Werekena people in Brazil mostly live on the Xié River and the upper reaches of the Rio Negro.

[5] The communities downstream from the Cumati waterfall on the Xié are mostly Protestant, influenced by the New Tribes Mission with its base near Vila Nova, near the mouth of the river.

[7] The towns of Santa Isabel and São Gabriel da Cachoeira, particularly the latter, are magnets to people looking for better education, paid work and access to cheaper goods than those provided by trading boats on the rivers.

[2] The Baré people once lived along the Río Negro upstream from the present location of Manaus to the Casiquiare canal and the Pasimoni River.

Later writers said they had adapted Hebrew names, used knotted cords to communicate messages, made large holes in their ear lobes and were cannibals.

To the Baré and Werekena there would have been little difference between the authorities and the merchants who forced them to work in extraction of products such as cocoa, salsaparilha, piaçaba, puxuri, balata and rubber.

Possibly the indigenous people were living in the headwaters and small streams to avoid destructive contact with whites.

At the start of the 20th century many families that had moved to Venezuela returned to Brazil to escape the merchants who were violently exploiting them in Guainia and Casiquiare.