While never popular in Indigenous communities themselves, it remains a preferred term among some anthropologists, notably in some parts of Canada and the English-speaking Caribbean. It was immediately rejected by some leading members of the Association, and while adopted by many it was never universally accepted. However, from its creation it has been controversial. The term Amerindian, a portmanteau of "American Indian", was coined in 1902 by the American Anthropological Association. Even though the term "Indian" generally does not include the culturally and linguistically distinct Indigenous peoples of the Arctic regions of the Americas-such as the Aleuts, Inuit or Yupik peoples, who entered the continent as a second, more recent wave of migration several thousand years later and have much more recent genetic and cultural commonalities with the Aboriginal peoples of the Asiatic Arctic Russian Far East-these groups are nonetheless considered "Indigenous peoples of the Americas". This unifying concept, codified in law, religion and politics, was not originally accepted by the myriad groups of Indigenous peoples themselves, but has since been embraced or tolerated by many over the last two centuries. This led to the blanket term "Indies" and "Indians" ( Spanish: indios Portuguese: índios French: indiens Dutch: indianen) for the Indigenous inhabitants, which implied some kind of racial or cultural unity among the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. Eventually, those islands came to be known as the " West Indies", a name still used.
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Many also maintain aspects of Indigenous cultural practices to varying degrees, including religion, social organization and subsistence practices. Some, such as the Quechuan languages, Aymara, Guaraní, Mayan languages and Nahuatl, count their speakers in millions. At least a thousand different Indigenous languages are spoken in the Americas. Many parts of the Americas are still populated by Indigenous peoples some countries have sizeable populations, especially Bolivia, Canada, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru and the United States.
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Some had varying degrees of knowledge of engineering, architecture, mathematics, astronomy, writing, physics, medicine, planting and irrigation, geology, mining, metallurgy, sculpture and goldsmithing. In some regions the Indigenous peoples created monumental architecture, large-scale organized cities, city-states, chiefdoms, states, kingdoms and empires.
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While some societies depended heavily on agriculture, others practiced a mix of farming, hunting and gathering. 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.Īlthough 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. Indigenous languages of the Americas, Spanish, Portuguese, English, Dutch, Danish, French and Russian (historically) Current distribution of the indigenous peoples of the Americas (not including mixed people like mestizos, métis, zambos and pardos)