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EntityQ672979· pop 37· linked from 314 articles

uncontacted people

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Also known as isolated peoples, lost tribes, isolated people, uncontacted peoples

isolated, independent tribes of people

In the Vinony graph

Vinony's link graph records 314 inbound references to uncontacted people, and connects out to indigenous people, Amazon basin and Waorani people.

It is catalogued under topics including Indigenous peoples, Stone Age and Uncontacted peoples.

Vinony links it to 37 Wikipedia language editions.

Wikidata facts

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Índios isolados no Acre 3.jpg
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Commons category
Uncontacted peoples
topic's main category
Category:Uncontacted peoples
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via Wikidata · CC0

~22 min read

Encyclopedic overview

Uncontacted peoples are groups of Indigenous peoples living without sustained contact with neighbouring communities and the world community. Indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation are groups who decide to remain uncontacted. Legal protections make estimating the total number of uncontacted peoples challenging, but estimates from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in the UN and the nonprofit group Survival International point to between 100 and 200 uncontacted tribes numbering up to 10,000 individuals total. In 2025, Survival International published the first comprehensive report on uncontacted peoples worldwide. It found robust evidence of 196 uncontacted peoples living in ten countries across South America, Asia and the Pacific. A majority of uncontacted peoples live in South America, particularly Brazil, where Survival has found evidence of 124 groups.

Knowledge of uncontacted peoples comes mostly from encounters with neighbouring Indigenous communities and aerial footage.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “uncontacted people” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

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