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Despite their insertion over the last few decades into urban centers like Boa Vista and all the modernity which has come to the villages – which includes electrical energy since the year 2000, TV, schools, industrialized medicine, among other things -, the Ye´kuana maintain their food traditions and their ways of producing this food. They are agriculturalists, gatherers and they hunt and fish, they still keep small domestic animals, especially dogs and birds. Their basic diet is fish soup, pepper and manioc bread.

In the Yanomami Indigenous Land, they, like their neighbors, the Sanuma, face game and fish scarcity. By contrast, they have large and bountiful gardens. Together with this production, clearly, there is a whole series of work activities, rituals that still organize time and space in Ye'kuana villages. Salaried professionals actively participate in this social and economic life, not only by contributing financially to their fathers-in-law and to the community, but also directly in community work activities, like the construction of houses or the clearing of new gardens.

They are excellent canoe-makers and navigators. In women’s work, manioc scrapers are highly valued. These products – canoes and manioc-scrapers – are the two main Ye'kuana specialties which are traded with other Carib groups and the Wapichana in Roraima, and there is a high demand for their manioc scrapers in the region. Similarly, there is a great demand from the NGOs and the FUNAI for Ye’kuana canoes in the health posts, schools and FUNAI posts in the indigenous area.