How many peoples there are and where they live

Lesson 4 of 5 in "Start here", about 6 minutes

According to the United Nations, there are about 476 million indigenous people in the world, living in some 90 countries. That is roughly 6% of humanity, or about one person in every sixteen. They belong to more than 5,000 distinct peoples and speak a large share of the world's roughly 7,000 languages. These are widely quoted estimates, not exact counts.

Region by region

Asia and the Pacific are home to the largest number by far: about 70% of the world total, according to the International Labour Organization. India alone counted 104 million people in its Scheduled Tribes in the 2011 census, which was 8.6% of its population. More than 700 tribes are notified across the Indian states. China officially recognises 55 ethnic minority groups, though it does not use the word indigenous.

Within India the spread is uneven. Madhya Pradesh has the largest tribal population of any state. In the north-eastern states of Mizoram, Nagaland and Meghalaya, well over 80% of residents belong to Scheduled Tribes. Central India, from Gujarat and Rajasthan across to Jharkhand and Odisha, forms a broad belt where the Bhil, Gond, Santhal, Munda, Oraon and many other peoples live.

In Latin America the World Bank has estimated more than 40 million indigenous people, about 8% of the region's population. In Bolivia and Guatemala they make up around four in ten people, by census figures. Quechua and Aymara speakers live along the Andes, Maya peoples in Guatemala and southern Mexico, and hundreds of smaller peoples across the Amazon basin.

In the 2020 United States census about 9.7 million people identified as American Indian or Alaska Native, alone or with another group. Canada's 2021 census counted about 1.8 million Indigenous people, some 5% of the population. Australia's official estimates put Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people at close to one million. In New Zealand, Māori are about one in six of the population.

Africa is harder to count. Few African states record indigenous identity, and the term is applied there mainly to hunter-gatherers such as the San, Hadza and Batwa, and to pastoralists such as the Maasai, Tuareg and Fulani. Estimates therefore vary widely. In the Arctic, the Inuit, Sámi, Nenets, Chukchi and other peoples live across eight countries around the pole.

Why the numbers are uncertain

• No single definition. Each country decides whom it counts, and some count nobody.
• Self-identification changes. More people tick the box when stigma falls and pride grows.
• Mixed ancestry. Many people belong to more than one group.
• Remote areas. Mountain, forest and desert communities are hard for census takers to reach.
• Politics. A state may undercount a people to weaken its claim to land or seats.

Small in number, large in footprint

Indigenous peoples are a small share of humanity but look after a large share of the planet. A study published in 2018 found that they manage or hold rights over about a quarter of the world's land surface, including a great deal of its least disturbed forest. You may also meet a claim that they protect 80% of global biodiversity. That figure is often repeated but poorly supported, so we do not use it.

They are also poorer than average. The International Labour Organization has estimated that indigenous people make up close to a fifth of the world's extremely poor, about three times their share of the population. The cause is not their way of life. It is the loss of land and the long exclusion from schooling, health care and political power.

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