The Kanoê are agriculturalists, hunters, fishers and gatherers. They raise chickens and wild pigs (queixadas), they make manioc gardens and plant sugarcane, corn, yams, sweet potato, peanuts, and tobacco. They also cultivate bananas, papaya and pineapple.

In the making of their gardens, the place is carefully cut down, burnt, cleared of stumps, and weeded. The gardens seem to be organized into specific sectors: sugar cane here, manioc there, peanuts over there. The same care is given for the animals they raise: the chickens have a coop to protect them. The pigs also have two houses the walls of which were made with wooden trunks stuck in the ground side by side and covered by woven palmleaves. The doors, made of split wooden boards, have a system of locks that allow them to keep the wild pigs penned up and protected from other carnivorous animals, especially jaguars, during the night. They also make use of the gardens of the Funai camp, from which they get manioc and yams, papayas and bunches of coco, every time their gardens are lacking. From what could be observed, the Kanoê have a relation of friendship and courtesy with the people of the camp.

Another trait which characterizes them is their disposition for work. The old woman Tutuá always wakes up very early and, armed with a machete, her bow and arrows and a big basket on her back, goes out searching for bunches of cocos, above all in the area of the camp where there are many palmtrees. After gathering them, she takes each fruit from the bunch, sets them in the basket and goes back to the village. Even with a heavy basket, she walks nearly three kilometers ever alert to the possibility of finding game animals. Once back in the maloca, she toasts the cocos, bit by bit, on the coals of the oven. Then, she breaks each one into four and, with a knife, she takes out the cooked pulp and, as she does this, she throws pieces of the pulp for the pigs to eat. It's a daily task, repetitive, which she always seems to do willingly.