Indigenous Colombians (Spanish: Colombianos indigenas), also known as Native Colombians (Spanish: Colombianos nativos), are the ethnic groups who have inhabited Colombia before the Spanish colonization of Colombia, in the early 16th century.
Estimates on the percentage of Colombians who are indigenous vary, from 3% or 1.5 million to 10% or 5 million. According to the 2018 Colombian census, they comprise 4.4% of the country’s population, belonging to 115 different tribes, up from 3.4% in the 2005 Colombian census. However, a Latinobarómetro survey from the same year found that 10.4% of Colombian respondents self-identified as indigenous. The most recent estimation of the number of indigenous peoples of Colombia places it at around 9.5% of the population and has been growing since an all-time low of 1965, where it was estimated only 1% of Colombians were indigenous. The 2023 estimate indicates Colombia as having the seventh highest percentage of Amerindians in the Americas with only Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, Guatemala, Peru, and Panama having a higher estimated percentage of Amerindians than Colombia.
Approximately two thirds of the registered Indigenous peoples live in La Guajira, Cauca, Nariño, Córdoba and Sucre Departments. Amazon Basin, a sparsely populated region, is home to over 70 different Indigenous ethnic groups.
Both historically and in recent times, they have been subjected to violence and oppression, ranging from land theft to massacres to the targeted killings of Indigenous activists and politicians.
History
Some theories claim the earliest human habitation of South America to be as early as 43,000 BC, but the current scholarly consensus among archaeologists is that human habitation in South America only dates back to around 15,000 BC at the earliest.[citation needed] Anthropologist Tom Dillehay dates the earliest hunter-gatherer cultures on the continent at almost 10,000 BC, during the late Pleistocene and early Holocene periods. According to his evidence based on rock shelters, Colombia’s first human inhabitants were probably concentrated along the Caribbean coast and on the Andean highland slopes. By that time, these regions were forested and had a climate resembling today’s. Dillehay has noted that Tibitó, located just north of Bogotá, is one of the oldest known and most widely accepted sites of early human occupation in Colombia, dating from about 9,790 BC. There is evidence that the highlands of Colombia were occupied by significant numbers of human foragers by 9,000 BC, with permanent village settlement in northern Colombia by 2,000 BC.
Beginning in the 1st millennium BC, groups of Amerindians including the Muisca, Quimbaya, Tairona, Calima, Zenú, Tierradentro, San Agustín, Tolima, and Urabá became skilled in farming, mining, and metalcraft; and some developed the political system of cacicazgos with a pyramidal structure of power headed by caciques.
Colombia’s Indigenous culture evolved from three main groups—the Quimbaya, who inhabited the western slopes of the Cordillera Central; the Chibchas; and the Kalina (Caribs). When the Spanish arrived in 1509, they found a flourishing and heterogeneous Amerindian population that numbered around 6 million, belonged to several hundred tribes, and largely spoke mutually unintelligible dialects. The two most advanced cultures of Amerindian peoples at the time were the Muisca and Taironas, who belonged to the Chibcha group and were skilled in farming, mining, and metalcraft. The Muisca lived mainly in the present departments of Cundinamarca and Boyacá, where they had fled centuries earlier after raids by the warlike Caribs, some of whom eventually migrated to Caribbean islands near the end of the first millennium A.D. The Taironas, who were divided into two subgroups, lived in the Caribbean lowlands and the highlands of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. The Muisca civilization was well organized into distinct provinces governed by communal land laws and powerful caciques, who reported to one of the two supreme leaders.
Subcategories
This category has the following 6 subcategories, out of 6 total.
A
Awa-Kwaiker (3 P)
D
Colombian people of indigenous peoples descent (1 C, 10 P)
I
Indigenous reserves in Colombia (4 P)
K
Kuna people (2 C, 5 P)
W
Wayuu (2 C, 2 P)
Witoto (1 C, 3 P)
Pages in category “Indigenous peoples in Colombia”
The following 78 pages are in this category, out of 78 total. This list may not reflect recent changes.
Indigenous peoples in Colombia
A
Achagua people
Andaquí people
Andoque people
Arhuaco
Awa-Kwaiker
B
Baniwa
Bará people
Barasana
Bora people
C
Calima culture
Carabayo
Carijona
India Catalina
Cauca culture
Chibcha language
Chimila people
Chitarero
Cocamilla
Cofán people
Concordat of 1928
Cubeo people
E
Emberá people
Embera-Wounaan
G
Guahibo people
Guambiano
Guane people
Guayupe
Guna people
H
Hupda people
Huya (mythology)
I
Inga people
K
Kãkwã people
Kamëntšá people
Kankuamo people
Kogi people
L
Lache people
M
Macuna
Mokaná
Monumento a la Raza (Neiva)
Barí people
Muisca
Cabildo Mayor del Pueblo Muisca
Muzo people
N
Nariño massacres
National Indigenous Organization of Colombia
Nukak
Nutabe
P
Paez people
Panche people
Patángoro people
Piaroa people
Pijao people
Pira-tapuya
Q
Quechua people
Quimbaya
S
San Agustín culture
Siona people
Siriano
Spanish conquest of New Granada
Sutagao people
T
Tahamí people
Tairona
Tariana people
Tegua people
Ticuna
Tinigua
Tucano people
U
U’wa people
V
Efigenia Vásquez Astudillo
Violence against Indigenous peoples in Colombia
W
Wayuu people
Witoto
Wiwa people
Y
Yagua
Yarigui people
Yukpa people
Z
Zenú
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