The anthropological contribution of Brazilian anthropologist Roberto Cardoso de Oliveira is presented as the result of a double intersection of different traditions and professional practices. The first association is between philosophy and anthropology as disciplines that constituted his intellectual syntax. The second is between indigenism and scholarship as professional practices that shaped his theoretical choices and his unique style of ethnology. The tensions derived from both intersections enabled Cardoso de Oliveira to elaborate his main contributions to anthropology through multiple applications of theories of ethnicity, identity, and hermeneutics.