Draft: Indigenous Populations

[CarwilB]

Region	Description	Population	Population Share
Mainland SE Asia	Indigenous / Ethnic minority	19 million	7%
Indonesia	Indigenous Peoples / Masyarakat Adat	20 / 50–70 million	7–25%
Philippines	Indigenous	11–22 million
South Asia	Scheduled Tribes Adivasi	116 million	9%
China	Ethnic minority Shǎoshù mínzú (少數民族)	125 million	9%
Middle East	Bedouins Kurds	25 million 30–40 million
North Africa	Berber	25–36 million	25–33% of Morocco & Algeria
Sahara Desert	Desert Pastoralists	20–25 million
Nigeria	Ethnic minority	86 million	33%
Russia	Indigenous Peoples	2–20 million	1–16%
Canada	First Nations, Métis, Inuit	1.4 million	4%
United States	Am Indian & Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander, Latin American Indigenous	4.5–9.9 million	1–3%
Mexico	Indigenous Indígena	25.7 million	23%
Central America	Indigenous Indígena	6.3 million	16%
South America	Indigenous Indígena	32 million	8%

[CarwilB]

How many people are Indigenous?

The oft-cited "more than 370 million" was a minimum estimate 19 years ago, and could be less than half a fair total.
Here's a global look…

youtu.be/cLD6JGc_EJk

UNESCO estimated 350 million Indigenous people in 2005 and the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues raised this to "more than 370 million" by 2006, but this number has always had its critics.

https://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/documents/SOWIP/en/SOWIP_web.pdf

Researcher Mirjam Hirch, of the Center for World Indigenous Studies, argued a year later that this estimate was far too restrictive, postulating between 750 million and 1 billion, but not giving details.

[https://www.cwis.org/2007/09/what-the-un-declaration-means/](https://www.google.com/search?q=https://www.cwis.org/2007/09/what-the-un-declaration-means/)

The International Labor Organization did their own global survey in 2019, looking for countries with official census data on Indigenous groups. They only found 58 countries, but their work established a minimum: 476 million.

https://www.ilo.org/publications/implementing-ilo-indigenous-and-tribal-peoples-convention-no-169-towards

In the video, I do a quick walk through of many world regions, multiple definitions and estimated totals.
Using this partial data, I can confirm a baseline of a half-billion Indigenous people, while leaving out much of sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia, etc.

Center for World Indigenous Studies circulates (since 2014) an estimate of 1.3 billion people.

[https://sandbox.cwis.org/wp-content/uploads/documents/premium/FWJ12.2.pdf](https://www.google.com/search?q=https://sandbox.cwis.org/wp-content/uploads/documents/premium/FWJ12.2.pdf)

I don't see persuasive evidence the number is this high, but would definitely not cite a range below 550 million.

If you cite the ILO, great, but clarify that their estimate of 476 million applies to just 58 countries, is likely a minimum for those countries, and was calibrated to 2019.
Based on global population growth alone, the ILO estimate corresponds to 497 million in 2024. Their appendix explains how to do that.
"More than a half billion Indigenous people as of 2024" is a reasonable baseline.

For a separate global overview that didn't try to calculate population, but rather geographic location, there's this Nature Sustainability article by Stephen Garnett and colleagues.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/326424629_A_spatial_overview_of_the_global_importance_of_Indigenous_lands_for_conservation