Rikbaktsa
ethnic group
The Rikbaktsa are an Indigenous group from the Mato Grosso region of Brazil.
Name
Rikbaktsa (Rikbaktsa rik, person + bak, human being + tsa [plural suffix]), the group's self-denomination, can be translated as "the human beings". Variant spellings include Ricbacta, Erikbaktsa, Erigpaktsa, Erigpagtsá, Erigpactsa, Erikbaktsá, Arikpaktsá, and Aripaktsá. Locally, they are also called Canoeiros (Canoe People), alluding to their aptitude in canoe use, or—more rarely—Orelhas de Pau (Wooden Ears), alluding to their practice of enlarging their earlobes with wooden plugs.
Location
The Rikbaktsa live in the Amazon rain forest of northwest Mato Grosso. Their traditional territory spanned 50,000 km² of Juruena River basin, stretching from the Papagaio River in the south to the Augusto Falls on the upper Tapajós River in the north. Their territory was bounded on the west by the Aripuanã River and on the east by the Arinos River, near the Peixes River.
Today, they have rights to three Indigenous Lands: Erikbaktsa (79,935 hectares, demarcated in 1968), Japuíra (152,509 hectares, demarcated in 1986), and Escondido (168,938 hectares, demarcated in 1998).
History
There are no pre-20th century historical references to the Rikbaktsa, and there have been no archeological studies to date their occupation of their traditional lands. However, oral histories, geographic references in their myths, and their detailed knowledge of nearby flora and fauna suggest that they have lived on the land for some time.
“Rikbaktsa” enters the record as ethnic group. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Rikbaktsa, ethnic and group can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q202511. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1968, 1986 and 1998.
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This entry incorporates text from “Rikbaktsa” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.