Indigenous peoples in Colombia (), also known as Native Colombians (), are the Indigenous peoples of the Americas whose ancestors lived in Colombia before the 16th-century Spanish colonization of Colombia.

Estimates of 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 tribal nations, up from 3.4% in the 2005 Colombian census. However, a Latinobarómetro survey from the year 2024 found that 75 people or 7.1% of Colombian respondents self-identified as Indigenous. The percentage of Indigenous peoples has been growing since an all-time low of 1965, where it was estimated only 1% of Colombians were Indigenous.Rueda, Ricardo (1974). La población de Colombia. Asociación Colombiana para el Estudio de la Población. p. 78.

Approximately two-thirds of the registered Indigenous peoples live in La Guajira, Cauca, Nariño, Córdoba and Sucre Departments. More than 70 distinct Indigenous ethnic groups live in the sparsely populated Amazon basin of Colombia.

Both historically and in recent times, Indigenous peoples have endured have violence and oppression, ranging from land theft to massacres to the targeted killings of Indigenous activists and politicians.

Population history In the pre-Columbian era, the total population of Colombia had an estimated 6 million people.Juan Friede (1966). Invasión del país de los chibchas. Santa Fe de Bogotá: Ediciones Tercer Mundo, pp. 19 However, after Spanish conquest, the population of Colombia was lowered to only 750,000 people in which Native people made up 80% of the population, at 600,000.Rosenblat, 1954: 59 That percentage would lower after independence, when the population grew to 1.327 million, of which Native people made up 53% of the population, at 700,000.Rosenblat, 1954: 36-56

In the 1912 census, the Native population accounted for 6.3% of the people, down from the 17.8% reported in 1852. By the 1993 census, that number had further lowered to 1%. However, increased recognition from the government made the proportion of registered Indigenous people grow to 3.4% in the 2005 census and further to 4.3% in the 2018 census. The demographic decline can be explained by liberal policies implemented by new republican elites, which tried to abolish Indigenous collective land ownership, which had been recognized by the Spanish monarchy, and they forced Natives to assimilate in mainstream national culture.Instituciones indigenistas en el siglo xix

As of 2023, the total population of Colombia has grown significantly to around 52 million people in which full-blooded Native people are estimated to make up around 10% of the population, at 5.2 million. The increase is caused by the raised awareness among Colombians about their Indigenous identity and from the 1991 constitution, which gave more legal rights to Indigenous communities.Estimates from Latinobarómetro in 2018 and 2023

Despite the reduction in the percentage of the total population, Native people make up a large part of the genetic ancestry of Colombians. A study determined that the average Colombian (of all races) has a mixture of 47% Amerindian, 42% European, and 11% African, with Native people having the most significant contribution in the study.

Indigenous Colombians 1600–2023 Year Population % ofColombia1600600,000 80%1825700,000 53%1852421,000 17.8%1912344,198 6.79%1918158,428 2.71%1938100,422 1.15%1951157,791 1.37%1964119,180 0.68%1973383,629 1.86%1985237,759 0.79%1993532,233 1.61%20051,392,623 3.40%20181,905,617 4.31%2023 (Estimation) 10%Source: Colombian census The reason for the discrepancy has mainly to do with Indigenous Colombians being undercounted in the censuses and/or choosing to identify with a different race.

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. 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.Bushnell, David and Rex A. Hudson. "Indigenous Peoples". In Colombia: A Country Study (Rex A. Hudson, ed.), pp. 82-86. Library of Congress Federal Research Division (2010). 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.

Pre-Columbian history

The complexity of Indigenous social organization and technology varieed tremendously, from stratified agricultural chiefdoms to tropical farm villages and nomadic hunting and food-gathering groups. At the end of the colonial period, the Native population still constituted about half of the total population. In the agricultural chiefdoms of the highlands, the Spaniards successfully imposed institutions designed to ensure their control of the Amerindians and thereby the use of their labor. The colonists had organized political and religious administration by the end of the 16th century, and they had begun attempts to religiously convert the Amerindians to Christianity, specifically Roman Catholicism.

The most important institution that regulated the lives and welfare of the highland Amerindians was the resguardo, a reservation system of communal landholdings. Under this system, Amerindians were allowed to use the land but could not sell it. Similar in some respects to the Native American reservation system of the United States, the resguardo has lasted with some changes even to the present and has been an enduring link between the government and the remaining highland tribes. As land pressures increased, however, encroachment of white or mestizo settlers onto resguardo lands accelerated, often without opposition from the government.

The government generally had not attempted to legislate in the past in matters affecting the forest Amerindians. During the colonial period, Roman Catholic missions were granted jurisdiction over the lowland tribes. With the financial support of the government, a series of agreements with the Holy See from 1887 to 1953 entrusted the evangelization and education of these Amerindians to the missions, which worked together with government agencies. Division of the resguardos stopped in 1958, and a new program of community development began to try to bring the Amerindians more fully into the national society.

The struggle of the Indigenous people on these lands to protect their holdings from neighboring landlords and to preserve their traditions continued into the late 20th century, when the 1991 constitution incorporated many of the Amerindian demands. New resguardos have been created, and others have been reconstituted, among forest tribes as well as highland communities. The 1991 constitution opened special political and social arenas for Indigenous and other minority groups. For example, it allowed for creation of a special commission to design a law recognizing the black communities occupying unsettled lands in the riverine areas of the Pacific Coast. Article 171 provides special Senate representation for Amerindians and other ethnic groups, while Article 176 provides special representation in the Chamber of Representatives: two seats "for the black communities, one for Indian communities, one for political minorities, and one for Colombians residing abroad". Article 356 guarantees Amerindian territorial and cultural rights, and several laws and decrees have been enacted protecting them. Article 356 refers somewhat vaguely to both "Indigenous territorial entities" and Indigenous resguardos.

By 1991, the country's 587 resguardos contained 800,271 people and including 60,503 families. The general regional distribution of these resguardos was as follows: Amazonia, 88; llanos, 106; Caribbean lowlands, 31; Andean highlands, 104; and Pacific lowlands, 258. They totaled , or about 24 percent of the national territory. Colombia today may have as many as 710 resguardos in 27 of the 32 departments.

Indigenous political organization

Individual Indigenous groups have a variety of governance structures. A number of Indigenous groups are represented through the National Indigenous Organization of Colombia (ONIC - Organización Nacional Indígena de Colombia). Increasing organization and agitation have sharply broadened the Indigenous land base over the past forty years. The government titled more than 200 new reserves from 1960 to 1990, with 334 total operating as autonomous municipalities by 1997.Brysk, Alison. 2000. From tribal village to global village: Indian rights and international relations in Latin America. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, p. 267.

Territories

Indigenous peoples hold title to substantial portions of Colombia, primarily in the form of Indigenous Reserves (), which encompass one-third of the country's land. The Indigenous Affairs division of the Ministry of Interior has 567 reserves on record, covering approximately 365,004 km2 which are home to 800,272 persons in 67,503 families.

The 1991 National Constitution of Colombia defined Territorial Entities (Entidades Territoriales) as departments, districts, municipalities and Indigenous territories. Within an Indigenous Territory Entity (ETI) the people have autonomy in managing their interests, and within the limits of the constitution have the right to manage resources and define taxes required to perform their duties. ETIs are to be defined by the government in conformance with the Organic Law on Land Management. However, this law has yet to be sanctioned so in practice the territories are unregulated.

Territories with predominant Indigenous populations

Departments