It is estimated that there are more
than 370 million indigenous people spread across 70 countries worldwide.
Practicing unique traditions, they retain social, cultural, economic and
political characteristics that are distinct from those of the dominant societies
in which they live. Spread across the world from the Arctic to the South
Pacific, they are the descendants - according to a common definition - of those
who inhabited a country or a geographical region at the time when people of
different cultures or ethnic origins arrived. The new arrivals later became
dominant through conquest, occupation, settlement or other means.
Among the indigenous peoples are
those of the Americas (for example, the Lakota in the USA, the Mayas in
Guatemala or the Aymaras in Bolivia), the Inuit and Aleutians of the
circumpolar region, the Saami of northern Europe, the Aborigines and Torres
Strait Islanders of Australia and the Maori of New Zealand. These and most
other indigenous peoples have retained distinct characteristics which are
clearly different from those of other segments of the national populations.
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