Abstracts Over the past decade in Brazil, the convergence between international environmentalism and indigenous cultural survival concerns led to an unprecedented internationalization of local A native struggles. The Indian‐environmentalist alliance has benefited both parties, but recent events suggest that it may be unstable and may pose political risks for native people. The limitations of transnational symbolic politics as a vehicle for indigenous activism reflect tensions and contradictions in outsiders' symbolic constructions of Indian identity.

This analysis of one Xavante group's innovative projects to represent Xavante culture to nonindigenous audiences reveals multiple and complex perceptions of instrumentalities as well as political goals. Unlike many contemporary Native (Amazonian and other) groups that use aspects of their culture to attract support and achieve concrete political goals, local objectives are relatively abstract and future oriented, having to do with public “image” and “existential recognition.” Analysis illustrates that local ideas about indigenous cultural displays aimed primarily at nonindigenous audiences, including “identity politics” and apparently straightforward cultural commodification, may not neatly correspond with anthropologists' or other outsiders' expectations. Overly narrow interpretive foci may cause anthropologists to overlook the potential for multiple and complex objectives and a diversity of locally significant dimensions.

What are the discourse presuppositions of the Habermasian public sphere? The present article explores this question by comparing the Western philosophy of language with the political discourse practices of the Xavante Indians of central Brazil. Specifically, it focuses on the relationships among discourse, the individual, and the collectivity. Discursive practices in Xavante men's council meetings pragmatically represent discourse as an emergent intersubjective production. Elaborate co‐performances that incorporate both participant commentary and the discourse of previous meetings oppose the principle of negativity to that of notability. Speech performances effectively detach individuals from the content of their speech, counteracting Xavante factionalism and promoting social cohesiveness as well as egalitarian relations among senior males. Simultaneously, speech practices recreate and reinforce age‐ and gender‐based relations of dominance. [discourse, co‐performance, factional politics, principles of negativity and notability, philosophy of language, Brazilian Indians]

In this article, I reveal the textual mechanisms that influential news editors employed to manipulate popular understandings of Mario Juruna, a Xavante leader who played an important role in advancing democracy during Brazil's military dictatorship and became the first Indian elected to national office. I argue that editors used the implicit messages of represented language to initiate shifts in the public's perception of the Xavante leader and thereby to change its opinion of him. Juruna's case illustrates that linguistic resources are powerful tools that hegemonic institutions, such as the press, and other dominant parties may employ to advance their own interests and influence public opinion on matters of political and social import.