Brasilia [Brazil], August 8: Brazil has 1.69 million Indigenous people, almost twice as many as previously acknowledged by the state, according to numbers announced on Monday by the national statistics agency IBGE from the 2022 census.
In 2010, the IBGE had counted 896,917 indigenous people.
Government officials and experts said the 88% increase was due to changes in methodology by census teams that travelled to remote villages in the Amazon rainforest to count the Indigenous population for the first time.
Minister of Indigenous Peoples Sonia Guajajara said more Indigenous people felt comfortable identifying themselves as such.
"Before they had to hide their identity for fear of being killed," Guajajara said at a news conference.
She and Planning Minister Simone Tebet spoke at a convention centre in Belem at the mouth of the Amazon River where the region's heads of state will meet this week to discuss trans-border cooperation to protect the Amazon and its forests.
Tebet told reporters the new population numbers will allow for improved budget funding for policies to help Indigenous communities, in education but mainly in health services and basic sanitation to make up for government neglect.
Tebet also said census teams, backed up by police and travelling on helicopters, were able to cover villages where they had no access in the past or were too dangerous due to the presence of illegal miners and loggers.
Source: Fijian Broadcasting Corporation