Gilberto Gil and the culture of indigenous peoples

As minister of Culture (2003–2008), Gilberto Gil visited some indigenous villages. In one of these visits, he was gifted with an indigenous club. Without knowing what to do with the object, the indigenous leader told him that he, himself, had never had to use it and then asked Gil to hold the extra heavy gift.

Sociologist Juca Ferreira, then-executive-secretary of the ministry, was part of delegation and recalled the advice from the indigenous leader:

“If you take this club and hit someone’s head, you are going to destroy your enemy. But you do not have to, you just have to hit the club against the ground three times and they will feel the power of the club’s owner.”

The power of the institutional club—in this case, the representative of the Ministry of Culture (MinC)—rested exactly in understanding that a people’s strength is within their memory and in the appreciation and preservation of cultural diversity.

In an exclusive interview, Juca Ferreira used this anecdote to exemplify the real extent of the importance of Gilberto Gil’s term to embrace in the ministry the cultures of the indigenous peoples, up to that point virtually absent from public policies.

“The indigenous people were coming and making us give them an importance that they had not had until that moment in the federal government policies,” Ferreira remarked, himself also minister of Culture from 2008 to 2010 and from 2015 to 2016.

In an excursion to Mato Grosso state, Gilberto Gil intermediated the negotiation between indigenous and the Salesians Order, who had established a missionary project in the area, back in the 19th century.

Juca Ferreira likened the excursion to a war operation, such was the secrecy requested by the Bororo people, who feared that then-state governor, Blairo Maggi, could take political advantage out of the meeting.

As the indigenous leader got closer to the ministerial delegation, he shot: “It had to be a black man,” said the sociologist. Then the Bororo leader went on talking about the ancestor bonds that connected his people to the African slaves.

“He said that during slavery in Brazil, the slaves would run and other nations would be weirded out by the skin tone of the blacks and be hostile towards them,” said Ferreira. But not the Bororos.

This line belongs to the speech of then-minister about the Living Culture Program in Berlin, Germany, on September 2nd, 2004.

Despite the increase in violence against indigenous peoples, only in the beginning of this century did the federal government recognize as heritage the knowledge, techniques, and worldviews of the indigenous peoples. And, with that, they are eligible to protection policies, appreciation, and preservation.

It amounts to centuries fighting deculturation and expropriation of their territories, always threatened by agribusiness, mining and deforestation.

In 2005, the Secretariat of Citizenship and Cultural Diversity [SID, in the Portuguese acronym], created the Working Group to Identify Public Policies for the Indigenous Culture, whose members are representatives of the indigenous peoples, public entities and civil society.

The aim was to organize specific policies for this group, which represents a milestone within the public policies of MinC. The working group had presented four pillars of action.

1. Strengthen of the cultural indigenous manifestations, which, for instance, have included the indigenous peoples in the promotion of public policies of ethnic tourism in regions of interest for these groups; and in the regularization of archeological sites within indigenous lands.

2. Appreciation of the indigenous cultures, which have established campaigns for the appreciation of the cultural heritage of these groups.

3. Ensuring indigenous peoples access to the cultural goods planned, such as actions for the visibility of ethnic museums and indigenous culture centers.