We Go Way Back (Human Version)
About 6% of the world population is indigenous people with long historic connections to their land, despite often being a numerical minority in their countries. Among them, and listed by continent:
Sunday
In northern North America, native groups like Inuit, Aleut, Yupik, and others abound, making Alaska the state with the highest native population at about 20% and the Canadian province Nunavut fully 80% native. Greenland boasts a nearly 90% Greenlandic Inuit population. Further south, the largest native groups are the Cherokee, Navajo, Choctaw, and Blackfeet, though the US Government recognizes nearly 600 individual tribes. In Mexico, about 21% of the population identifies as indigenous, primarily descendants of the powerful Aztec and Mayan civilizations.
Monday
Western South America was once home to the vast Inca empire, the largest pre-Colombian civilization in all of the Americas, so many modern natives are now descendants of this empire. There are now 748 indigenous groups recognized in South America and the Caribbean, and the majority of Bolivians (62%) consider themselves members of an indigenous group. The most prominent theory for how the Americas were first peopled is the Bering Land Bridge Theory, which proposes Asians crossed to modern-day Alaska over a land bridge from modern-day Russia when sea levels were much lower during the last ice age, with many continuing south. If true, native Americans of North and South America are descendants of these Asian travelers.
Tuesday
Site of the earliest known fossils of human ancestors and home to modern humans for at least 300,000 years, Africa contains a vast variety of people from long before settlors and immigrants of more recent history. There are now at least 3,000 individual tribes and 50 million indigenous people on the world’s second-largest continent, including the ancient San (Bushmen) people, the oldest indigenous group in Africa and likely the world. Other well-known groups include the Pygmies, Maasai, and Berbers, and some African tribes remain wholly nomadic hunter-gatherers, building no permanent structures, just as they’ve lived for at least ten millenia.
Wednesday
If we consider continent-straddling Russia as Asian, Europe remains comparatively light on groups now considered indigenous. The most prominent is the Saami, native reindeer herders who occupy the Arctic regions of Sweden, Norway, and Finland and number 50,000-100,000.
Thursday
Three-quarters of the world’s indigenous people live in Asia, with far too many groups to cover here. Despite 92% of Chinese being the Han ethnic majority, this nation still contains the greatest total number of indigenous people at 125.3 million. India comes in second with most of the 700+ recognized indigenous groups in the country’s northeast. Similarly, Russia’s indigenous populations are concentrated in the colder regions of the north and east, with some smaller groups numbering as few as 350 people. Hundreds of distinct indigenous groups live in Indonesia, representing 1/4 of the population, while Japan has just two indigenous groups.
Friday
Australian Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders make up the two main aboriginal groups of Australia. Like indigenous Africans, Aboriginals have a particularly long history on their land, occupying it for at least 65,000 years now. The Maori are indigenous to New Zealand, and ancient Polynesians, with remarkable navigation skills, spread across the vast South Pacific to populate Samoa, Tonga, Hawaii, Fiji, Tahiti, and many other islands.
Saturday
The only continent without indigenous people is Antarctica, since this forbidding land still has no permanent human habitation, just settlements of rotating scientists. Notably, however, new evidence suggests the indigenous people of New Zealand, the Maori, were the first people to discover the continent, and over 1,000 years before Europeans.