Portal:Indigenous peoples of the Americas

The Indigenous peoples of the Americas Portal

Indigenous population throughout the Americas

The Indigenous peoples of the Americas, also called Indians, Amerindians, or simply Natives, are the peoples who are native to the Americas or the Western Hemisphere. Their ancestors are among the pre-Columbian population of South or North America, including Central America and the Caribbean. Indigenous peoples live throughout the Americas.

There are at least 1,000 different Indigenous languages of the Americas still in use in the 21st century. Some languages, including Quechua, Arawak, Aymara, Guaraní, Nahuatl, and some Mayan languages, have millions of speakers and are recognized as official by governments in Bolivia, Peru, Paraguay, and Greenland. (Full article...)

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The American Indian Movement (AIM) is a Native American advocacy group in the United States, founded in July 1968 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. AIM was initially formed to address American Indian sovereignty, treaty issues, spirituality, and leadership, while simultaneously addressing incidents of police harassment and racism against Native Americans forced to move off of reservations and away from tribal culture by the 1950s era federal government termination policies, created in the 1930s but never enforced. "As independent citizens and taxpayers, without good education or experience, most 'terminated' Indians were reduced within a few years to widespread illness and utter poverty, whether or not they were relocated to cities" from the reservations. The various specific issues concerning Native American urban communities like Minneapolis, also known as "red ghettos", are high unemployment levels, racism, police harassment, poverty, and substandard housing. Aim's overriding objective is to create "real economic independence for the Indians". From its beginnings in Minnesota, AIM soon attracted members from across the United States and Canada.

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Cree man, Maple Creek, Saskatchewan, Canada, 1903. photograph by G. E. Fleming

image credit: British Library

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General images

The following are images from various Indigenous peoples of the Americas-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1A schematic illustration of maternal (mtDNA) gene-flow in and out of Beringia, from 25,000 years ago to present
Image 2An elderly Maya woman (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 3A Navajo man on horseback in present-day Monument Valley in Arizona (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 4Indigenous people at a farm plantation in Minas Gerais in present-day Brazil, c. 1824 (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 5An illustration in Florentine Codex, compiled between 1540 and 1585 CE, depicting the Nahua peoples suffering from smallpox during the conquest-era in central Mexico (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 6A Huichol woman from Zacatecas, Mexico (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 7A Mapuche man in present-day Chile (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 8A Warao family traveling in their canoe in Venezuela (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 9Owners of a roadside cafe near Cachi, Salta Province, Argentina (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 10Areas of Indigenous peoples in the Americas at time of European colonization (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 11A representation of the domesticated plant species cultivated by Indigenous peoples have influenced the crops that were produced globally. (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 12Chimu culture feather pectoral, feathers, reed, copper, silver, hide, cordage, c. 1350–1450 (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 13An Indigenous Terena man from present-day Brazil (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 14Evo Morales, an Aymara member and former President of Bolivia (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 15Embera girl in the Darién Province, 2006. (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 16Wayuu women in the Guajira Peninsula, which encompasses parts of Colombia and Venezuela (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 17A map showing the origin of the first wave of humans into the Americas, including the Ancestral Northern Eurasian, which represent a distinct Paleolithic Siberian population, and the Northeast Asians, which are an East Asian-related group. The admixture happened somewhere in Northeast Siberia. (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 18The Rarámuri marathon in Urique (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 19A Quechua woman and child in the Sacred Valley in Cuzco Region, Peru (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 20A Mapuche man and woman; the Mapuche make up about 85% of Indigenous population that live in Chile. (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 21The major indigenous language families of South America, except Quechuan, Aymaran, and Mapuche (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 22The common bean is native to Mexico and Central America and later began to be cultivated in South America. (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 23Proportion of Native Argentines in each department in 2022. (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 24A map of Canada showing the percent of self-reported Indigenous identity (First Nations, Inuit, Métis) by census division, according to the 2021 Canadian census (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 25A Navajo boy in the desert in present-day Monument Valley in Arizona with the "Three Sisters" rock formation in the background in 2007 (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 26The tomato (jitomate, in central Mexico) was later cultivated by the pre-Hispanic civilizations of Mexico. (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 27Maya glyphs in stucco now on display at Museo de sitio in Palenque, Mexico (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 28A Choctaw artist in present-day Oklahoma (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 29Shaman of the Cofán people from the Amazonian forest in present-day Ecuador (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 30Quechua women in festive dress on Taquile Island on Lake Titicaca, west of Peru (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 31Indigenous peoples textile art in 1995 by Julia Pingushat, including Inuk, Arviat, Nunavut, Canada, wool, and embroidery floss (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 32Guambía people relaxing in Colombia (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 33The ancient Mesoamerican engraving of maize now on display at the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 34Tunumiit Inuit couple from Kulusuk, Greenland (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 35Proportion of Native Brazilians in each department in 2022. (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 36The West Indies (or Antilles) in relation to the continental Americas (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 37Proportion of Native Mexicans in each municipalities in 2020. (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 38Moche portrait vessel from Peru, 100 BCE–500 CE (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 39Pre-contact distribution of North American language families (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 40An Indigenous man playing a panpipe, antara, or siku (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 41A qpGraph on the formation of Ancient Paleo-Siberians and Native American populations. (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 42Proportion of Native Americans in each county in 2020. (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 43Ceramic portrait of a Maya noblewoman, Jaina Island, Mexico, 600–800 CE (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 44Language families of Indigenous peoples in North America shown across present-day Canada, Greenland, the United States, and northern Mexico (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 45Members of an uncontacted tribe encountered in Acre in Brazil in 2009 (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 46Modern Maya people in Sololá, Guatemala (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 47Principal component analysis showing the Native American cluster in other Eurasian populations. (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 48Indigenous Pipil women dancing in the traditional Procession of Palms in Panchimalco, El Salvador (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 49A carnival with Tzeltal people in Tenejapa Municipality, Chiapas (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 50An Indigenous woman in traditional dress near Cochabamba, Bolivia (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)

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Pocahontas (born Matoaka, known as Amonute, and later known as Rebecca Rolfe, c. 1595 – March 1617) was a Virginia Indian notable for her association with the colonial settlement at Jamestown, Virginia. Pocahontas was the daughter of Powhatan, the paramount chief of a network of tributary tribal nations in the Tsenacommacah, encompassing the Tidewater region of Virginia. In a well-known historical anecdote, she is said to have saved the life of an Indian captive, Englishman John Smith, in 1607 by placing her head upon his own when her father raised his war club to execute him.

Pocahontas was captured by the English during Anglo-Indian hostilities in 1613, and held for ransom. During her captivity, she converted to Christianity and took the name Rebecca. When the opportunity arose for her to return to her people, she chose to remain with the English. In April 1614, she married tobacco planter John Rolfe, and in January 1615, bore him a son, Thomas Rolfe. Pocahontas's marriage to Rolfe was the first recorded interracial marriage in North American history.

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Did you know…

... that the Cascajal Block, a serpentinite slab from the Olmec civilization, was dated to the which early first millennium BCE and may represent the earliest writing system in the Americas?
... that Jim Thorpe (Sac and Fox) won the 1912 Olympic gold medals for the pentathlon and decathlon?
...that underwater panthers were creatures appearing in the mythology of a number of Native American traditions, which combined the features of mountain lions or lynx with those of snakes, and were believed to inhabit the deepest parts of lakes and rivers?

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