Indigenous peoples in Brazil
Indigenous peoples once comprised an estimated 2,000 tribes and nations inhabiting what is now the country of Brazil, before European contact around 1500.
Indigenous brazilians (alone/one race only) in 2022 | |
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| 1,227,642 0.6% of the Brazilian population (2022 Census) | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
| Predominantly in the North and Central-West | |
| Languages | |
| Indigenous languages, Portuguese | |
| Religion | |
| Originally traditional beliefs and animism. 61.1% Roman Catholic, 19.9% Protestant, 11% non-religious, 8% other beliefs. Animist religions still widely practiced by isolated populations | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Other indigenous peoples of the Americas |
At the time of European contact, some of the indigenous peoples were traditionally semi-nomadic tribes who subsisted on hunting, fishing, gathering and migrant agriculture. Many tribes suffered extinction as a consequence of the European settlement and many were assimilated into the Brazilian population.
The Indigenous population was decimated by European diseases, declining from a pre-Columbian high of 2 to 3 million to some 300,000 as of 1997, distributed among 200 tribes. By the 2022 IBGE census, 1,693,535 Brazilians classified themselves as Indigenous, and the same census registered 274 indigenous languages of 304 different indigenous ethnic groups.
On 18 January 2007, FUNAI reported 67 remaining uncontacted tribes in Brazil, up from 40 known in 2005. With this addition Brazil passed New Guinea, becoming the country with the largest number of uncontacted peoples in the world.