Census 2022: Brazil home to 1.69 mi indigenous people
Brazil’s 2022 Demographic Census showed that 1,693,535 individuals declare themselves indigenous countrywide, or 0.83 percent of the nation’s resident population, distributed across 4,832 municipalities. The figures stem from the 2022 Census and were disclosed Monday (Aug. 7) by statistics bureau IBGE.
Back in the 2010 Census, 896,917 indigenous people were counted, which corresponded to 0.47 percent of the population living in Brazil, revealing that the indigenous population varied 88.82 percent in 12 years. The 2022 Census found a greater number of officially delimited indigenous territories, rising from 501 in 2010 to 573 last year.
Among the reasons reported for this surge are the better mapping of indigenous areas in both cities and remote areas, standardized procedures for approaching native leaders, the deployment of community guides and guides from indigenous authority Funai or indigenous health secretariat Sesai, special training for census takers and teams from these agencies, and real-time monitoring of census data collection and adaptations to its questionnaire.
“In each village we have the support of at least one indigenous leader. Our thanks to all the leaders who have accepted the Census as a government policy but also as a right of indigenous peoples to be surveyed in the best possible way,” said Marta Antunes, responsible for the project IBGE Traditional Peoples and Communities.
The North of Brazil stands out as the region home to 44.48 percent (753,357) of the country’s indigenous population. The Northeast has 31.22 percent (528,800). The two regions account for 75.71 percent of the nation’s native population.
Two states concentrate 42.51 percent of Brazil’s indigenous population: Amazonas, with 490,854, corresponding to 28.98 percent of the national indigenous population; and Bahia, with 229,103, or 13.53 percent. Mato Grosso do Sul has the third largest amount (116,346), followed by Pernambuco (106,634) and Roraima (97,320). These five states account for 61.43 percent of the indigenous population.
Indigenous territories
The people living on indigenous lands totaled 689.2 thousand, of whom 622.1 thousand were indigenous (90.26%) and 67.1 thousand non-indigenous (9.74%). Nearly half of this population (49.12%) is in the North, where indigenous lands had 338.5 thousand inhabitants, of whom 316.5 thousand (93.49%) were indigenous.
The Yanomami territory, which extends across the states of Amazonas and Roraima, has the highest number of indigenous people (27,152)—4.36 percent of the total in indigenous lands in the country.
The second largest number is reported in the Raposa Serra do Sol territory, in Roraima, with 26,176, followed by the Évare I, in Amazonas, with 20,177.
