A rite of passage in the Amazon

An indigenous girl prepares to take part in a ritual during the final and most symbolic day of the Wyra’whaw coming-of-age festival at the Ramada ritual centre, in the Tenetehar Wa Tembe village, located in the Alto Rio Guama indigenous territory in Para state, Brazil. — AP

THE indigenous adolescents danced in a circle under the thatched-roof hut from nearly dawn to dusk while parents looked on from the perimeter.

Some of the adults smoked tobacco mixed with the wood from a local tree in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest.