Culture, Rights, Policies

The leitmotif of this work is the formation of a public policy agenda for culture in Brazil aimed at indigenous peoples. Based on the idea of the politicization of culture as a major feature of our time and the institutionalization of policies aimed at Brazilian ethnic and cultural diversity, especially since the 2000s, the aim is to demonstrate how the State and indigenous peoples can reinvent themselves in the context of democratic advances that include the creation of spaces for participation and social control of these policies. In such spaces, the ideas of autonomy or self-determination, protagonism, and empowerment become commonplace in the relationships established between indigenous peoples, agents, and agencies of the State and Civil Society (social actors of advocacy). Programs and actions of the Ministry of Culture (MinC), such as the Brasil Plural and Cultura Viva programs, are taken as examples to think about these issues. Despite advances in the recognition of the differentiated collective rights of indigenous peoples and their positive inclusion in the public agenda of state actions, inequalities persist between them and the largest beneficiaries of public resources in the cultural field.