This chapter seeks to explore and test the counterhegemonic possibilities of local initiatives by ethnic groups and by the indigenous movement in Brazil.

Initiatives taken by indigenous groups (either those with very specific demands, or those with a wider political scope) are initiatives of assertion of particular rights derived from the socio-cultural specificity that differentiates the whole of the indigenous population from Brazilian national society, and that also establishes the differences between each ethnic group. The object of analysis is the initiatives that are responsible for the emergence of the political voice of the Indian as an active agent in the field of Brazilian indigenous activism and for the assertion of new political aspects in the indigenous movement and its local organizations.

In objective terms, the initiatives under consideration are the actions and programs whose strategies and forms of action and mobilization present a more markedly political character and that can thus be considered, in an exact sense, as instances of processes of counterhegemonic globalization which we call "cosmopolitanism."

In order to contextualize the indigenous initiatives in the wider field of Brazilian indigenous politics, the first part presents a historical and political map of indigenous struggles in recent years, specifically from the 1970s to the present. Based on a case study of mobilization over the demarcation of indigenous lands, the second part discusses the issues, the impasses, the adopted strategies, the political gains, and the setbacks present in the processes of inter-ethnic relations in Brazil. The analysis of the struggles for indigenous self-determination in Brazil can, undoubtedly, give an enormous contribution to the production of a new social theory that might provide a better understanding of contemporary social processes.

Based on local initiatives by different groups and by the indigenous movement in Brazil, this chapter aims to contribute to the development of criteria that allow us to distinguish between emancipatory and retrogressive forms of mobilization, and that, at the same time, allow the construction of theoretical-conceptual references which different human groups can draw on as an instrument of support for their struggles to assert differentiated ethnic rights in the context of globalized inter-ethnic relations.