File:Kaiapos.jpeg|300px|right|thumb|Brazilian Indigenous chiefs of the Kayapo tribe. The term indigenous peoples can be used to describe any ethnic group of people who inhabit a geographic region with which they have the earliest known historical connection, alongside immigrants which have populated the region and which are greater in number. However, several widely accepted formulations, which define the term indigenous peoples in stricter terms, have been put forward by prominent and internationally recognized organizations, such as the United Nations, the International Labour Organization and the World Bank. Indigenous peoples in this article is used in such a narrower sense.

Other related terms for indigenous peoples include aborigines ( ), aboriginal peoples, native peoples, first peoples, first nations, Amerigine, and autochthonous (this last term having a derivation from Greek, meaning "sprung from the earth"). Indigenous peoples may often be used in preference to these or other terms, as a neutral replacement where these terms may have taken on negative or pejorative connotations by their prior association and use. It is the preferred term in use by the United Nations and its subsidiary organizations.

Definition

main: definitions and identity of indigenous peoples

thumb|170px|right|Ati woman. The Negritos were the earliest inhabitants of Southeast Asia.

The adjective indigenous has the common meaning of from or of the original origin Therefore, in a purely adjectival sense any given people, ethnic group or community may be described as being indigenous in reference to some particular region or location.

Key to a contemporary understanding of "indigenousness" is the political role an ethnic group plays, for all other criteria usually taken to denote Indigenous groups (territory, race, history, subsistence lifestyle, etc.) can to a greater or lesser extent also be applied to majority cultures. Therefore, the distinction applied to Indigenous ethnic groups can be formulated as "a politically underprivileged group, who share a similar ethnic identity different to the nation in power, and who have been an ethnic entity in the locality before the present ruling nation took over power" (Greller, 1997).

However, the specific term indigenous peoples has a more restrictive interpretation when it used in the more formalized, legalistic and academic sense, associated with the collective rights of human populations. In these contexts, the term is used to denote particular peoples and groups around the world who, as well as being native to or associated with some given territory, meet certain other criteria (such as having reached a social and technological plateau thousands of years ago). This article is concerned with the latter, and not the former, sense of the term.