Uncontacted peoples

Uncontacted peoples are groups of indigenous peoples living without sustained direct relations with the world community. Generally such peoples are aware of the outside world, and have or had interactions with neighboring peoples, or may have had sustained contact with the wider world in the past. 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. The vast majority of uncontacted peoples live in the Amazon rainforest in South America, especially Brazil, where Survival has found evidence of 124 groups.

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

Definition

Uncontacted peoples generally refers to Indigenous peoples who have remained largely isolated to the present day, whose lifestyles are detached from the influences of the world community, and who function mostly independently from any political or governmental entities. Uncontacted specifically refers to a lack of sustained contact with the majority of non-Indigenous society at present as most Indigenous groups have had some form of contact with other peoples; European exploration and colonization during the early modern period brought Indigenous peoples worldwide into contact with colonial settlers and explorers.