Also called ‘native’ or ‘tribal’ people, indigenous peoples live in every continent, and have ancient ties to the land, water and wildlife of their ancestral domain. The UN Working Group on Indigenous Populations adopted the following definition:
‘Indigenous communities, peoples and nations are those which, having a historical continuity with pre-invasion and pre-colonial societies that developed on their territories, consider themselves distinct from other sectors of the societies now prevailing in those territories, or parts of them. They form at present non-dominant sectors of society and are determined to preserve, develop and transmit to future generations their ancestral territories, and their ethnic identity, as the basis of their continued existence as peoples, in accordance with their own cultural patterns, social institutions and legal systems' (Study of the Problem of Discrimination Against Indigenous Populations, J. Martinez Cobo, United Nations Special Rapporteur, 1987).
Indigenous peoples number about 300 million, representing over 5,000 languages. They live in more than 70 countries in all of the world's regions, from the Arctic to the Amazon, from the Sahara to the Pacific Islands. The majority - more than 150 million - live in Asia, in countries such as Bangladesh, Burma, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Thailand. Around 30 million indigenous peoples live in Latin America. In Bolivia, Guatemala and Peru, indigenous peoples make up over half the population.