Indigenous Peoples

Indigenous Peoples, earliest known inhabitants of a country. The term is generally applied to the original or native inhabitants of a country, as opposed to an intrusive conquering race from another area, or colonists and their descendants. Indigenous peoples are often small-scale hunter-gatherers, shifting cultivators, or pastoral nomads. There are about 200 million indigenous peoples in the world, three quarters of whom live in Asia. The names of a number of indigenous peoples mean “human” or “people”—for example, the Ainu, Inuit, and Nuer. Most nations have instituted measures for the welfare of the indigenous peoples within their territories. Some governments, such as those of the United States and Australia, have established reservations for their indigenous peoples. In India many of these are specially listed in a schedule in the country’s constitution.

All indigenous peoples have been affected by contact with contemporary civilization; in some cases, the introduction of disease, warfare, alcohol, and drugs has demoralized and decimated peoples. For example, a third of Brazil’s Yanomami people died in the 1970s from battles with and diseases introduced by gold prospectors. Others, such as the Ainu of northern Japan, have become almost wholly assimilated. The greatest degree of racial mixture has occurred among the native Polynesians of Hawaii. The Native American population of the United States has extensively intermarried with Americans of European and African descent. Most of those Native Americans living on reservations retain some traditional cultural practices. In Central and South America and in the Caribbean region many groups have become extinct, in most cases after Spanish or Portuguese conquest. Among indigenous peoples who have kept strong elements of their original identity are the Inuit, Maori, Dayak, and Australian Aborigines. Tribes in such comparatively inaccessible areas as the Amazon River Basin of South America still live according to their traditional cultures. The United Nations declared 1993 the International Year of the World’s Indigenous Peoples.