Portal:Indigenous Peoples of the Americas Resource | Learn About, Share and Discuss Portal:Indigenous Peoples of the Americas At Popflock.com

The Indigenous peoples of the Americas Portal

Current distribution of the indigenous peoples of the Americas (not including mestizos, zambos and pardos)

The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the inhabitants of the Americas before the arrival of the European settlers in the 15th century, and the ethnic groups who now identify themselves with those peoples.

Although some indigenous peoples of the Americas were traditionally hunter-gatherers--and many, especially in the Amazon basin, still are--many groups practiced aquaculture and agriculture. The impact of their agricultural endowment to the world is a testament to their time and work in reshaping and cultivating the flora indigenous to the Americas. Although some societies depended heavily on agriculture, others practiced a mix of farming, hunting and gathering. In some regions the indigenous peoples created monumental architecture, large-scale organized cities, city-states, chiefdoms, states, kingdoms and empires. Some had varying degrees of knowledge of engineering, architecture, mathematics, astronomy, writing, physics, medicine, planting and irrigation, geology, mining, sculpture and goldsmithing. (Full article...)

Selected article

Community of igloos. (Illustration from Charles Francis Hall's Arctic Researches and Life Among the Esquimaux, 1865)

An igloo (Inuit language: [iglu] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), Inuktitut syllabics [i?'lu] (plural: [igluit] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) [i?lu'it]) or snowhouse is a type of shelter built of snow, originally built by the Inuit.

Although igloos are usually associated with all Inuit, they were predominantly constructed by people of Canada's Central Arctic and Greenland's Thule area. Other Inuit people tended to use snow to insulate their houses, which were constructed from whalebone and hides. Snow is used because the air pockets trapped in it make it an insulator. On the outside, temperatures may be as low as -45 °C (-49 °F), but on the inside the temperature may range from -7 °C (19 °F) to 16 °C (61 °F) when warmed by body heat alone.

More...

All selected articles

Selected image

Kuna woman selling Molas in Panama City

image credit: Markus Leupold-Löwenthal

Full set of selected images

General images

The following are images from various Indigenous peoples of the Americas-related articles on Wikipedia.

Evo Morales (Aymara), former President of Bolivia
Indigenous woman in traditional dress, near Cochabamba, Bolivia
"The Maiden," one of the discovered Llullaillaco mummies. A Preserved Inca human sacrifice from around the year 1500.
Guambía people relaxing in Colombia
Two Maya women in the highlands of Chiapas
A Mayan woman.
Cultural areas of North America at time of European contact
Indigenous people at a Brazilian farm plantation in Minas Gerais ca. 1824
Language families of indigenous peoples in North America: shown across present-day Canada, Greenland, the United States, and northern Mexico
Tsuu T'ina children at a parade
Maya women from Guatemala
Indigenous Salvadoran Pipil women dancing in the traditional Procession of Palms, Panchimalco in El Salvador
Current distribution of the indigenous peoples of the Americas (not including mestizos, zambos and pardos)
Andenes in the Sacred Valley of the Incas, Peru. Many of the Incas' descendants, Quechua-speaking Andean farmers, continue to use the Incan agricultural terraces.
Eight Crow Nation prisoners under guard at Crow agency, Montana, 1887
Maya glyphs in stucco at the Museo de sitio in Palenque, Mexico
Choctaw artist from Oklahoma
A group of Quechuas in the Conchucos District, Ancash Region, Peru
Drawing accompanying text in Book XII of the 16th-century Florentine Codex (compiled 1540-1585), showing Nahuas of conquest-era central Mexico suffering from smallpox
Chimu culture feather pectoral, feathers, reed, copper, silver, hide, cordage, ca. 1350-1450 CE
Textile art by Julia Pingushat (Inuk, Arviat, Nunavut, Canada), wool, embroidery floss, 1995
Bill Reid's sculpture The Raven and the First Men (collection of the Museum of Anthropology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver). The Raven represents the Trickster figure common to many mythologies.
This map shows the percentage of indigenous population in different countries of the Americas.
Proprietors of a roadside cafe near Cachi, Argentina
A bison hunt depicted by George Catlin
Quechua woman and child in the Sacred Valley, Cuzco Region, Peru
A Venezuelan Warao family traveling in their canoe
Shaman of the Cofán people from the Ecuadorian Amazon Ecuador Amazonian forest
Schematic illustration of maternal (mtDNA) gene-flow in and out of Beringia, from 25,000 years ago to present
The Kogi, descendants of the Tairona, are a culturally-intact, largely pre-Columbian society. The Tairona were the only indigenous Andean civilization that was not fully conquered.
Wixarika (Huichol) woman from Zacatecas
Brazilian indigenous man of Terena tribe
Mapuche man and woman. The Mapuche make up about 85% of Chile's indigenous population.
Tunumiit Inuit couple from Kulusuk, Greenland
Illustration of Paleo-Indians hunting a glyptodon

Selected biography

Jacobus Franciscus "Jim" Thorpe (Sac and Fox (Sauk): Wa-Tho-Huk, translated to Bright Path) (May 28, 1888 - March 28, 1953) was an American athlete of mixed ancestry (mixed Caucasian and American Indian). Considered one of the most versatile athletes of modern sports, he won Olympic gold medals for the 1912 pentathlon and decathlon, played American football (collegiate and professional), and also played professional baseball and basketball. He lost his Olympic titles after it was found he was paid for playing two seasons of semi-professional baseball before competing in the Olympics, thus violating the amateurism rules. In 1983, 30 years after his death, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) restored his Olympic medals.

More...

All selected biographies

Did you know...

... that the Cascajal Block, a serpentinite slab from the Olmec civilization, was dated to the which early first millennium BCE and may represent the earliest writing system in the Americas?
... that Jim Thorpe (Sac and Fox) won the 1912 Olympic gold medals for the pentathlon and decathlon?
...that underwater panthers were creatures appearing in the mythology of a number of Native American traditions, which combined the features of mountain lions or lynx with those of snakes, and were believed to inhabit the deepest parts of lakes and rivers?

More...

Subcategories

Select [?] to view subcategories

? Indigenous peoples of the Americas

? Indigenous people of the Americas

? Lists of indigenous peoples of the Americas

? Anti-indigenous racism in the Americas

? Archaic period in the Americas

? Indigenous peoples of the Caribbean

? Indigenous peoples of Central America

? Indigenous culture of the Americas

? History of indigenous peoples of the Americas

? Indigenous rights organizations in the Americas

? Indigenous languages of the Americas

? Non-fiction books about indigenous peoples of the Americas

? Indigenous peoples of North America

? Indigenous politics in the Americas

? Indigenous peoples of South America

Related portals

Things you can do

Join a WikiProject:
Suggest featured articles and pictures.
Help maintain the Indigenous peoples of the Americas portal.

Selected panorama

Machu Picchu

image credit: Martin St-Amant

Topics

Recognized content

This is a list of recognized content, updated weekly by JL-Bot (talk · contribs). There is no need to edit the list yourself. If an article is missing from the list, make sure it is tagged (e.g. {{WikiProject Indigenous peoples of the Americas}}) or categorized correctly. See WP:RECOG for configuration options.