Indigenous Communities Today
Argentina has a total population of 40 million. The Additional Survey on Indigenous Populations, published by the National Institute for Statistics and Census, gives a total of 600,329 people who see themselves as descending from or belonging to an indigenous people.
For a number of reasons the different indigenous organisations do not believe this to be a credible survey: First, the methodology used in the survey was considered inadequate, as a large number of indigenous people live in urban areas where the survey was not fully conducted. Second, many indigenous people in the country hide their identity for fear of discrimination. Moreover, when the survey was designed in 2001, it was based on the existence of 18 known peoples in the country, today there exist more than 31 groups. This increase, reflects a growing awareness amongst indigenous people in terms of their ethnic belonging.
As many Argentinians either believe that the majority of the indigenous have died out or are on the verge of doing, or 'their descendants' assimilated into Western civilisation many years ago, they wrongly hold the idea that there are no indigenous people in their country. The use of pejorative terms likening the indigenous to lazy, idle, dirty, ignorant and savage are part of the everyday language in Argentina.Due to these incorrect stereotypes many indigenous have over the years been forced to hide their identity in order to avoid being subjected to racial discrimination.
Read more about this topic: Indigenous Peoples In Argentina
Famous quotes containing the words indigenous, communities and/or today:
“What is a country without rabbits and partridges? They are among the most simple and indigenous animal products; ancient and venerable families known to antiquity as to modern times; of the very hue and substance of Nature, nearest allied to leaves and to the ground,—and to one another; it is either winged or it is legged. It is hardly as if you had seen a wild creature when a rabbit or a partridge bursts away, only a natural one, as much to be expected as rustling leaves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”
—A.J. (Arthur James)
“We have today and I could call their name
Who know exactly what is out of joint
To make their verse and their excuses lame.
They’ve tried to grasp with too much social fact
Too large a situation.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)