The multicultural conception of human rights regarding the recognition and application of the rights of indigenous peoples in Brazil

Abstract

The protection of indigenous peoples at the international level is relatively recent and dates back to 1948, when the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights were approved, which generically guarantee to all individuals a series of human rights. Specifically, the first supra-governmental document of binding character was ILO Convention nº 107 of 1957, which had features of Integrationist Policies. However, with the rise of multiculturalism — which recognizes the existence of a diversity of cultures that coexist and self-influence — in Latin American countries, in the mid-1980s, there was recognition in the Constitutional Texts of the protection of various rights of ethnic minorities. This phenomenon also occurred in Brazil, in view of the promulgation of the 1988 Federal Constitution, which abandoned the integrationist paradigm, recognized the multiplicity of cultures and guaranteed indigenous peoples, among others, the right to language, tradition and to reproduce their culture, essential for the preservation and propagation of respect for their sociocultural uniqueness.