In some Jê groups terms which are usually translated as "people", or "human being", frequently used as a form of native self-designation, are also the ones which refer specifically to "relatives". In others, distinct vocabularies are employed in both cases. Through an analysis of these terms as they are discussed in the literature, the article tries to show how the "construction of kinship" and the "construction of the person" are articulated in these societies. It suggests that, differently from what occurs in Western (American) kinship, in which the relative as a person is quite different from the distinctive features which define a person as a relative (Schneider), we are facing a cultural order that uses the same human identity criteria for the ones that are, by definition, relatives.
Jê Indians; Kinship; Perspectivism; Ethinonymous
