Who are the indigenous people in Amazon rainforest?

In South America, deep in the Amazon rainforest, most of the known indigenous tribes li
ve. Brazil claims to have most of the indigineous people in the world, estimating as man
y as there are about 305 tribes living in Brazil today, totaling around 900,000 people, or
0.4% of Brazil’s population.

The government has recognized 690 territories for its indigenous population, covering
about 13% of Brazil’s land mass. Nearly all of this reserved land (98.5%) lies in the
Amazon.

The largest tribe today is the Guarani, numbering 51,000, but they have very little land
left. During the past 100 years almost all their land has been stolen from them and
turned into vast, dry networks of cattle ranches, soya fields and sugar cane plantations.
Many communities are crammed into overcrowded reserves, and others live under
tarpaulins by the side of highways.

The people with the largest territory are the relatively isolated 19,000 Yanomami, who
occupy 9.4 million hectares in the northern Amazon, an area about the same size as the
US state of Indiana and slightly larger than Hungary.

The largest Amazonian tribe in Brazil is the Tikuna, who number 40,000. The smallest
consists of just one man, who lives in a small patch of forest surrounded by cattle
ranches and soya plantations in the western Amazon, and eludes all attempts at
contact.

History

The history of Brazil’s indigenous peoples has been marked by brutality, slavery,
violence, disease and genocide.

When the first European colonists arrived in 1500, what is now Brazil was
inhabited by an estimated 11 million Indians, living in about 2,000 tribes. Within the first
century of contact, 90% were wiped out, mainly through diseases imported by the
colonists, such as flu, measles and smallpox. In the following centuries, thousands more
died, enslaved in the rubber and sugar cane plantations.

By the 1950s the population has dropped to such a low that the eminent senator and
anthropologist Darcy Ribeiro predicted there would be none left by the year 1980. On
average, it is estimated that one tribe became extinct every year over the last century.
Livelihood

Staple crops such as manioc, sweet potato, corn, bananas and pineapples are grown in
gardens. Animals such as peccaries, tapir and monkeys, and birds like the curassow
are hunted for meat.

Some tribes, like the Matis, use long blowguns with poisoned darts to catch prey. Most
use bows and arrows, and some also use shotguns. Nuts, berries and fruits such as
açai and peach palm are regularly harvested and bees’ honey is relished.

Fish, particularly in the Amazon, is an important food. Many indigenous people use fish
poison or timbó to stun and catch fish.

Indigenous People territories.

Wildfires may grab headlines but indigenous peoples and local communities who
depend the Amazon face many different threats. Not only are their territories targeted
for illegal extractive activities such as gold mining and deforestation but without clear
land titles their situation remains legally precarious.

But more than this – indigenous peoples and local communities offer a scalable, climate
solution, as recently recognised in the UN IPCC Land Use report.

Protecting their rights will benefit communities, the Amazon itself and all of humanity.

In the Peruvian Amazon the community of Boca Parimanu, the Amahuaca peoples
tread this difficult balance.

Madre de Dios, the most biodiverse region in the Peruvian Amazon, is home to 37
native communities. This southern region is also the most affected by illegal mining,
more than 60 000 hectares of forest have been deforested by this activity.

Due to its high biodiversity and extension of Amazon forest, Madre de Dios is a key
region for climate commitments and the fight against the climate crisis.

Threats and Challenges

Fires have been reported in protected indigenous reserves of the Brazilian Amazon,
raising fears that loggers and land grabbers have targeted these remote areas during
the dramatic surge in blazes across the world’s biggest rainforest.
Blazes have been seen on the Araribóia indigenous reserve in Maranhão state – a
heavily deforested reserve on the Amazon’s eastern fringes, which is home to about 80
people from an isolated group of Awá indigenous people, described by the NGO
Survival International as the world’s most endangered tribe.

Several hydro-electric dam complexes are being built near uncontacted Indian
groups; they will also deprive thousands of other Indians of land, water and livelihoods.
The dam complexes will provide cheap energy to mining companies, who are poised to
carry out large scale mining on indigenous lands if Congress passes a draft bill that is
being pushed hard by the mining lobby.

Resistance

There are over 200 indigenous organizations, which are at the forefront of the battle to
defend their hard-won rights. Hundreds of Indians took to the streets last year to protest
against the government’s plans to weaken their rights.