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Rituals are a constant in Bororo life. The most important rites of passage (in which people pass from one social category to another) are naming, initiation and funeral. According to Novaes, "In the naming ritual the child is formally introduced into the Bororo society of his/her iedaga (the person who gives the name is the mother's brother) and of the women of his/her father's clan, who ornament him/her for the ritual.

These persons synthesize in a clear way the attributes that form the personality of the Bororo and that integrates in a consistent way juridical aspects( transmitted by the iedada and associated with matrilinearity) and aspects of a more mystical character (associated with patrilinearity)" (1986:230). With his/her name, the child begins to be associated with a social category - a clan's lineage - linked to a cultural hero of bororo society who, in mythical times, established the fundaments of social life, which has to be continued by concrete human beings.

Funeral is the longest of the bororo rituals and was also described and interpreted by Sylvia Caiuby Novaes: "It may sound like a paradox, but it is precisely through the funeral that Bororo society reaffirms the vitality of its cultural life. This is a special moment for the socialization of the young, not only because it is at that time that many of them are formally initiated, but also because it is through their participation in the collective chants, dances and hunting and fishing trips that are carried out in such occasions that they have the chance of learning and realizing how rich their culture is. But why making of a time of loss, such as someone's death, a moment of cultural reaffirmation and even of re-creation of life?

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For the Bororo, death is the result of the actions of the bope, a supernatural entity involved in every process of creation and transformation, such as birth, puberty and death. When a person dies, his/her soul, which the Bororo call aroe, moves into the body of certain animals, such as the jaguar, the puma or the 'jaguatirica' (spotted leopard-cat). The deceased's body is wrapped in straw mats and buried in a shallow grave dug in the circular village's central court. Each day the grave is watered in order to accelerate the decomposition of the body, whose bones will be, in the end of the process, adorned. Between an individual's death and his/her body's ornamentation, which will then be buried for good, two or three months pass. It is a long time, during which the great rituals are performed. A man will be chosen to represent the deceased. Adorned all over, his body is completely covered with feathers and paintings; on the head he carries an enormous feathery headdress and a visor made of yellow feathers covers his face. In the village court it is no longer a man who dances but rather the aroemaiwu, literally the new soul who, with its movements, presents itself to the world of the living.

Among the several tasks the dead person's representative is supposed to perform, the most important will be hunting a large cat, whose skin shall be given to the deceased relatives, in a ritual in which the entire village participates. This will ensure the vengeance of the dead person, through his/her representative, over the bope, the entity that caused his/her death. Such ritual creates and re-creates Bororo society, revealing the mysteries of a society that makes of death a moment for the reaffirmation of life" (Novaes, 1992).

Besides funeral and naming, the Bororo's intense ritual life includes also the perforation of the ears and of the lower lip, the celebration of the new maize, the preparation of hunting and fishing trips, and the celebration of the jaguar skin, of the gavião real (harpy eagle) and of the jaguar killer, among others. In all those cases, new relations are superimposed upon old ones, resulting in a social configuration in which individuals maintain relations emanating from various instances, with different rights, obligations, approaches and forms of treatment. The emphasis on one type of relationship or another depends on the social situation in which the people involved are (Novaes, 1986).