Indigenous peoples in Brazil
Proportion of Native Brazilians in each municipality as of the 2022 Brazilian census | |
| Total population | |
| Amerindian ancestry predominates 1,693,535 (2022 census) 0.83% of the Brazilian population | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
| Predominantly in the North and Central-West | |
| Languages | |
| Indigenous languages, Portuguese | |
| Religion | |
| Indigenous religion, animism. 61.1% Roman Catholic, 19.9% Protestant, 11% non-religious, 8% other beliefs. | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Other Indigenous peoples of the Americas |
Indigenous peoples in Brazil or Native Brazilians (Portuguese: Brasileiros nativos) are the peoples who lived in Brazil before European contact around 1500 and their descendants. Indigenous peoples once comprised an estimated 2,000 district tribes and nations inhabiting what is now Brazil. The 2010 Brazil census recorded 305 ethnic groups of Indigenous people who spoke 274 Indigenous languages; however, almost 77% speak Portuguese.
Historically, many Indigenous peoples of Brazil were semi-nomadic and combined hunting, fishing, and gathering with migratory agriculture. Many tribes were massacred by European settlers, and others assimilated into the growing European population Brazilian population.
The Indigenous population was decimated by European diseases, declining from a pre-Columbian high of 2 million to 3 million to approximately 300,000 by 1997, distributed among 200 tribes. According to the 2022 IBGE census, 1,693,535 Brazilians classified themselves as Indigenous, and the census recorded 274 Indigenous languages spoken by 304 different Indigenous ethnic groups.
On 18 January 2007, Fundação Nacional do Índio reported 67 remaining uncontacted tribes in Brazil, up from 40 known in 2005. With this increase, Brazil surpassed New Guinea, becoming the country with the largest number of uncontacted peoples in the world.