The 2022 Demographic Census of Brazil showed that 1,693,535 individuals identify as indigenous across the country, or 0.83% of the nation’s resident population, distributed across 4,832 municipalities. The figures come from the 2022 Census and were released in August by IBGE, the statistics institute.
In the 2010 Census, 896,917 indigenous individuals were counted, corresponding to 0.47% of the resident population in Brazil, revealing that the indigenous population grew by 88.82% in 12 years. The 2022 Census identified a greater number of officially demarcated indigenous territories, increasing from 501 in 2010 to 573 last year.
Among the reasons cited for this increase are better mapping of indigenous areas both in cities and remote regions, standardized procedures for approaching native leaders, the employment of community guides and guides from the indigenous authority Funai or the indigenous health secretary 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 accepted the Census as a government policy, but also as a right of indigenous peoples to be counted in the best possible way,” said Marta Antunes, responsible for the IBGE’s Peoples and Traditional Communities project.
The North region of Brazil stands out as hosting 44.48% (753,357) of the country’s indigenous population. The Northeast has 31.22% (528,800). The two regions concentrate 75.71% of the native population of the country.
Two states account for 42.51% of the indigenous population of Brazil: Amazonas, with 490,854, corresponding to 28.98% of the national indigenous population; and Bahia, with 229,103, or 13.53%. Mato Grosso do Sul has the third largest number (116,346), followed by Pernambuco (106,634) and Roraima (97,320). These five states account for 61.43% of the indigenous population.
Indigenous Territories
The population living in indigenous lands totaled 689.2 thousand, of which 622.1 thousand were indigenous (90.26%) and 67.1 thousand were non-indigenous (9.74%). Almost half of this population (49.12%) is in the North, where indigenous lands housed 338.5 thousand inhabitants, of which 316.5 thousand (93.49%) were indigenous.
The Yanomami territory, which extends across the states of Amazonas and Roraima, has the largest number of indigenous people (27,152)—4.36% of the total on indigenous lands in the country.
The second largest number is recorded in the Raposa Serra do Sol territory, in Roraima, with 26,176, followed by Évare I, in Amazonas, with 20,177.
Source: Agência Brasil