Before 1884 the Bakairi received only rapid mention on the part of members of bandeira expeditions, explorers of the north of Mato Grosso and administrators of the then province. It was only after the expeditions of Karl von den Steinen to the Xingu, in 1884 and 1887, that the information about them gets more dense. Two books of his are worth noting: Central Brazil: Expedition of 1884 for the exploration of the Xingu (1942) and Among the Aborigines of Central Brazil (1940), both classics in South American ethnology. They contain precious information on the Eastern and Western Bakairi, their history, language, social organization, mythology, rituals and relations with other indigenous peoples. Various other expeditions followed those of von den Steinem, especially those by Max Schmidt, who recorded, among other things, important data on the migrations of the Bakairi of the Xingu to the Paranatinga and the relations they established with the regional population, including with the SPI agents. Kalervo Oberg and Fernando Altenfelder Silva, who were among the Bakairi in the mid-20^th Century, published articles on social organization and ritual seclusion, respectively.

There are five academic monographs on the Bakairi. The first, by Edir Pina de Barros (1977), brings together information on their history and social organization, their relations with missionaries, SPI agents and rural land-holders of the region. In the light of this data, she analyzes the question of identity and ethnicity. In her doctoral thesis (1992), this same researcher presents dense information on their history, cosmology, social organization, naming practices, rituals and shamanism. Various of her articles have been published in anthropological journals. Another reference is the thesis by Debra Sue Picchi (1982), which focuses on the impact of mechanized agriculture on the traditional subsistence system, nutritional status and health. To analyze this question, historical, cultural, and above all, ecological factors were considered. Darlene Yaminalo Taukane, a Bakairi woman, wrote, in her recently published Master’s dissertation, about school education among the Bakairi of Paranatinga, including the reflection of indigenous teachers on school education and the place of the school in their project for the future, besides an important chapter on the process of socialization in their society, which has already been published in the form of an article. In relation to their language, there is the doctoral thesis by Tânia Conceição Clemente de Souza, on discourse and orality among the Bakairi of Paranatinga. There is also the classic study of language by Capistrano de Abreu made on the basis of information of an informant brought from Paranatinga to Rio de Janeiro, in the final decade of the 19^th Century. There are also the studies done by missionaries of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, since the 1960s. Noteworthy among these are the translations of Biblical texts and readers for literacy in the maternal language. Under their auspices, the Bakairi have been producing texts in their own language, some of them published. The Bakairi teachers are producing texts, in the context of their training as teachers.