Indigenous Peoples of the Americas: History, Cultures, and Contemporary Issues

The Indian population of the Americas is very unevenly distributed, with several thousand reservations. Yet most Indians in Central and South America do not live on reservations.

While in Canada in 2006 just under 700,000 people (2.1% of the population) were considered Indians and 615 tribes were recognised on around 3000 reservations, in the USA there were 566 tribes recognised by the federal government, representing 0.97% of the population, and around 245 unrecognised tribes. Within the states, emphases can be equally discerned. For example, the majority of U.S. Indians live in California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Oklahoma. In total, around 3.5 to 4 million Indians live in North America.

In Latin America, on the other hand, there are 65 to 70 million Indians, about half of them in Mexico and a third in the Andean countries. Only in Bolivia do they head the government. The demarcation from the rest of the population is less sharply defined, reservations exist mainly in Brazil, Colombia, Panama, Paraguay and Venezuela and are mostly located in the forest areas of the Orinoco, Paraná and Amazon basins.

In Mexico alone, the indigenous population is estimated at 30% of the over 100 million Mexicans. Mestizos make up another 60% of the total population. In Belize, they are estimated at 10% and 45% of the population, respectively. In Guatemala, 59.4% are mestizos (called Ladinos here), and 45% of the population belongs to various Mayan groups. Of these, 9.1% are Quiché, 8.4 Cakchiquel, 7.9 Mam, 6.3% Kekchí, and another 8.6% belong to other Maya groups. In neighbouring Honduras, the proportion of Indians is 7%, and that of Mestizos 90%, similar to El Salvador, but where Indians now make up only 1% of the population. In Nicaragua, the proportion of mestizos is 69%, that of Indians 5%. In Costa Rica, the proportion of Indians is only about 1%, and in Panama it is 5%. The Caribbean is an extreme, as for example in Cuba there are practically no Indians left, similar to Jamaica. On Dominica, 300 to 500 Caribs live in their own reservation.

In South America there are also focal points. While the proportion of Indians in Colombia is only 1%, the proportion of mestizos there is 58%, and 3% are descendants of blacks and Indians. In Guyana the proportion of Indians is 9.1%, in Suriname 2%. The proportion is considerably higher in the Andean states, such as Ecuador, where 25% of the population are Indians, in Peru 45%, in Bolivia even 55% - 30% are Quechua and 25% Aymara.

Further south, in Chile, the proportion of the Indian population is only just under 5%, most of them Mapuche. In Argentina their share is less than 3%, in Uruguay there are almost no Indians, in Paraguay their share is around 5%, but in Brazil it is less than 1%.

In North America, Indians often live on reservations, called reserves in Canada and reservations in the United States. In Canada, the reservations came into being as a result of treaties that the Indians concluded with the government. Commissions determined the reserve boundaries after consulting the Indians, but without involving them in the decision. Within these areas, they were entitled to their traditional rights and did not pay taxes on sales made there. Today, about half of the Indians live in cities.

The Indian policy of the United States changed direction several times. All tribes were forced to leave their homes east of the Mississippi River beginning in 1830, and often several tribes were grouped together on one reservation. Although many of the rural Indians lived in poverty, some tribes managed to recover economically. According to the 2000 census, about 85% lived off reservations, mostly in cities.

In Brazil and in the neighbouring countries there are still isolated peoples, groups that have had such bad experiences in contacts with whites that they try to avoid them. In Brazil alone, it is estimated that there are about 67 groups.

Languages consist of dozens of distinct language families as well as many isolated languages. There have been several attempts by linguists to group them into superordinate families, none of which is generally accepted. Two language families diverge markedly from the others: The Na-Dené languages and the Eskimo-Aleutic languages. Genetic analyses of the Indians suggest several waves of immigration in the settlement of the Americas. Therefore, it can be assumed that these languages are spoken by Indian peoples who came to America as later immigrants, when the other peoples had already settled the continent.

Only Indian cultures in Central America have developed writings. The oldest evidence comes from the Olmecs in Central America and is dated to about 900 BC. Other scripts also developed here, especially those of the Maya, Mixtecs, Zapotecs and Aztecs. There was a range of variation between still purely logographic writing to a largely phonetic script.

History of languages in America

After the colonization of the Americas, the attitude towards indigenous languages ranged from neglect to targeted suppression. Only the missionary orders began early to learn the languages and to establish appropriate schools. This was true first in Peru, where a high school was established, then in numerous missionary areas between Quebec and California in the north, through the Mexican metropolitan areas to the border areas in southern Chile and along the Portuguese border (Brazil). Occasionally, they thereby spread languages to areas where that language had not previously been in use, as in the case of Quechua. Besides languages with millions of speakers, such as Aymara, Guaraní and Nahuatl, the missionaries learned only a few languages, which in turn strengthened their survival.

In North America, the use of indigenous languages was actively suppressed for a long time. This policy culminated in the so-called Termination with the aim of detaching Indians from their tribal association and integrating them into society as individuals. To this end, in particular, the use of Indian languages in schools was strictly forbidden. It was not until 1958 that this goal was abandoned, and since then there have been numerous attempts to revive North American languages.

Distribution today

In North America, some of the larger languages, such as Cree (with 60-90,000 speakers) in Canada or Navajo in the southwestern U.S. (with about 150,000 speakers) are not endangered, while others are on the verge of extinction. In Canada, at least 74 languages are still in use.

Mayan languages dominate in Mexico and neighboring countries to the south. Mexico recognizes 62 national indigenous languages, with more than 6 million residents over the age of 5 claiming one of these languages as their mother tongue in 2005.

In the Caribbean, the languages of the Cariben and the Arawak are only rarely spoken; among their representatives are the Taíno.

The situation is different in South America. According to estimates, about 1500 languages were spoken there before Columbus, of which about 350 still exist today. The classification into language families is, as in the whole of America, highly controversial. The number of speakers is considerably higher than in North America and the Caribbean, but at the same time most of them are concentrated in a few languages. These in turn were learned and promoted by missionaries. Thus, numerous languages survived, for which materials are now available in writing and via the Internet.

While in the eastern lowlands of South America Tupí languages predominate, the largest branch of which are the Tupí-Guaraní languages, the Andean region is dominated by Quechua languages, which were already used by the Incas. In addition, there are large language groups, such as the Aymara languages, which include Aymara, the indigenous language with the most speakers in South America (about 2.2 million). In Argentina, about a quarter of a million people speak one of the two Araucanian languages.

Predominantly in North America, new languages arose in contact between whites and Indians, especially mixed languages such as Chinook Wawa on the Pacific coast, because extensive trade required a simple language of communication. Added to this were languages such as Michif, the most important Métis language in Canada, which arose from Indian and European languages in the formation of a mixed people and has origins in Cree and French. Bungee, also spoken by Métis, on the other hand, has Scottish Gaelic and Cree roots.

Bolivia, Paraguay, Ecuador, and Peru now recognize one or more indigenous American languages as official languages in addition to Spanish.