Heritage, memory and narratives of Afro-Brazilian and indigenous history: relations between cultural policies and knowledge production in the contemporary Brazil

Abstract

This research intends to analyze how quilombolas and indigenous elaborate historical narratives through the cultural and natural heritage, in order to understand the dynamics of the knowledge production of these groups and about them. In order to do so, it is necessary to identify the categories with which these societies operate and how they construct their cultural policies, and also how they interacted and interact with institutional policies, thus playing a fundamental role in claiming the right to memory, territory and to being recognized as historical agents. In this sense, it is necessary to discuss the places destined to Amerindians, Africans and Afro-Americans for the European colonial discourses, legitimized by diverse sciences, diffused in exhibitions and museums since 19th century and that served as paradigm to the Brazilian cultural policies. Considering the historicity of Brazilian cultural policies, especially from the debate on the "national identity" of the Estado Novo Era and the "multicultural" country emerged from the Constitution of 1988, the networks of knowledge and interactions will be analyzed in two places inscribed as a World Heritage Site: the Ribeira Valley, a remnant region of the Atlantic Forest where there are several quilombola communities, and the ruins of the Guarani Jesuit Missions, fundamental in the guarani-mbyá worldview. (AU)