Political Participation of the Brazilian Indigenous Movement and the Effectiveness of Fundamental Human Rights

Abstract

This paper attends with the relationship between the indigenous movement and the public sphere through political participation as a means of realizing human dignity according to Brazilian and Latin American perspectives. The objective is to qualify the performance of this movement in the Brazilian public sphere through the National Council for Indigenous Policy (originally CNPI) and the prior consultation protocol provided for in ILO Convention No. 169. The levels and degrees of participation of Juan E. Diaz Bordenave and the levels of the public sphere of John Keane are considered. The exploratory and comparative study involves indirect documentation. The findings’ analysis suggests that the political participation of the indigenous movement in CNPI is limited to the meso-public sphere of spaces institutionalized by the state’s government, with little capacity for political protagonism. In contrast, the implementation of the prior consultation protocols articulates the different levels of the public sphere. It expresses greater political protagonism of Brazilian indigenous peoples, which can provide a more effective Brazilian indigenous people’s political intervention system toward gathering comprehensively fundamental human rights of different dimensions in promoting human dignity.