In a period when collective rights have become a prominent issue, the theme of this chapter is the relation between Indians and the Brazilian State from a socio-juridical perspective. The fact is that the indigenous peoples of America have been forgotten by national states founded on individual rights. The acknowledgement of collective rights in American juridical systems has made Indians, and thus their rights, visible.

A short introduction establishes the special situation of Latin America, which maintains a profound cultural diversity but which was very early on divided into national states. The process of this relation of exclusion in the construction of national states is illustrated by the history of such peoples as the Xetá, the Guarani, the Pataxó, the Panará, and the Ticuna. Each of these histories demonstrates the change in the behavior of the Brazilian government at the end of the 20th century, when it recognized collective rights which can guarantee peoples' rights to live according to their practices, customs, and traditions.

The next step is to understand what has meant, for the juridical system and for indigenous peoples, the constitutionalization of collective rights in America. Once laws have been inscribed in the constitution, the difficulty of their application emerges. Established order is stronger than juridical innovations. Meanwhile, the Judicial Power and the organs of Justice, although divided, have started to move the system towards the protection of collective rights.

However, established rights correspond to a western juridical conception, essentially founded on territoriality or on the conversion of the right to individual property into collective property. This proposal does not meet the needs of the Guarani people, for example, although it may meet other peoples' needs. Moreover, even among peoples that have a clear idea of territory, like the Ticuna, the action of civilization is creating veritable indigenous cities, concentrating the population in only one place, which generates new challenges and difficulties. Thus, the chapter analyzes how social practices and the legal context end up expressing eminentely local emancipatory expectations, since each people assimilates the new rights in a different and special way, metabolizing alien western rights and practices according to their own current needs and desires.