Culture is an essential part of governance. It enlightens a people’s perceptions of the rules and values of its society about what is deemed the right way of exercising power and governing. Culture is a belief system of ideas, values, laws that shape a society as a whole and is its foundation. Cultural governance makes up the public policies that shape a societies culture. It is these policies that have a great weight on shaping a diverse societies internal interaction, and whether a society is equitable amongst its diverse cultural groups.
It is vital for cultural governance to take into account the demographics and history of diverse groups cultures when informing public policy and the role that different groups culture will have in building an equitable society and how culture is expressed in the arts to ensure that each group is provided with the same rights to freely express their way of life in a manner that builds a society positively.
“Peace cannot exist without justice, justice cannot exist without fairness, fairness cannot exist without development, development cannot exist without democracy, democracy cannot exist without respect for the identity and worth of cultures and peoples.”
RIGOBERTA MENCHU TUM
Guatemalan Indigenous Rights Activist
1990 UNESCO Prize for Peace Education, 1992 Nobel Peace Prize Winner
