With the participation of scholars, representatives of the public sector, members of indigenous movements and officials of the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), the seminar “Indigenous April: Knowledge, Rights and Public Policies” was held this Monday (27).

The event took place in the context of the celebration of Indigenous Peoples' Day, celebrated on April 19, and was organized by the IBGE, through the State Superintendency of Pará, and by the Federal University of Pará (UFPA), within the scope of the Rooting Full Tenure Program, of the Rectory's Office.

The event represented an opportunity to debate the census process of indigenous populations that took place throughout the 2022 Population Census. Moreover, it enabled the construction of a space for dialogue and mediation of knowledge, critical reading of reality, territorial planning and strengthening the autonomy and affirmation of indigenous peoples.

During the opening of the seminar, the IBGE superintendent in the state of Pará, Rony Helder Nogueira, highlighted the existing partnership between the Institute and UFPA, through Casa Brasil IBGE, opened in 2025 and which operates at the university.

“It is a space for disseminating information and a way of fulfilling our mission of portraying Brazil,” said Nogueira, who also highlighted the importance that indigenous movements will have during data collection within the scope of the Census of Agriculture, Forestry and Aquaculture, which will go into the field in 2027.

The dean of Student Assistance and Accessibility at UFPA, Ronaldo Marcos de Lima Araújo, highlighted that the university has a diverse student body, with around three thousand quilombola students and 700 indigenous students. During the seminar, the professor reinforced the importance of having access to data on indigenous populations to better understand our reality as a country.

“The university is popular in its composition, and this brings many challenges. We still have many teachers, managers, technicians and students who do not know how to deal with this diversity. It is important that we educate the university. There needs to be a dialogue between these different types of knowledge so that this integration can occur,” highlighted him.

From this perspective, members of indigenous movements were also present. The representative of the Regional Coordination of the National Foundation for Indigenous Peoples (FUNAI), Richelly de Nazaré Lima da Costa, reaffirmed the need to gather information about indigenous populations after centuries of silence.

“The number of self-declared indigenous people in the last two censuses is significant. This is because the State is going to the indigenous people, and they are demonstrating. Not just because they want access, but because they need to present themselves. They are protagonists of this social structure. These people exist and need to be visible. They need to speak, and we need to listen.”

The seminar was held in the auditorium of the Rectory of UFPA and also had the support of indigenous student organizations, notably the Association of Students Indigenous Peoples of UFPA (APYEUFPA), as well as student representations from the Indigenous Academic Directory (DAIN) of the Federal University of the West of Pará (UFOPA) and the Academic Collective of the Federal University of the South and Southeast of Pará (UNIFESSPA).

Improvements in IBGE data collections

The first lecture of the day, entitled “Methodological innovations in the portrayal of indigenous peoples in the 2022 Population Census and potentialities,” was led by the manager of Traditional Peoples and Communities and Specific Population Groups of the IBGE Directorate of Surveys (DPE), Marta Antunes.

Antunes highlighted the advances in data collection carried out by the IBGE with indigenous populations over the years and how improvements in the methodology used allowed for more accurate collection on these populations during the last Population Census.

“Being here with representatives of the indigenous movement is very gratifying, because the movement, from the first stage of consultation, assumed a partner role in this Census. If we hadn’t counted on the indigenous movement, we wouldn’t have achieved the results we achieved,” said Antunes.

The manager highlighted that the last Census identified an 88% increase in the indigenous population. Among the improvements implemented by the IBGE were small changes to the questionnaire, in order to cover the specificities of the people portrayed; the development of a specific questionnaire for indigenous leaders; carrying out differentiated training for enumerators who worked with these populations; in addition to developing other forms of communication to raise awareness among indigenous populations about the importance of collecting information.

“The Census needs to adapt to the reality and territoriality of indigenous peoples and not force indigenous peoples to adapt to the way in which we produce official statistics. The participation of indigenous teachers and students was important, including in the translation of our awareness materials into different languages. Therefore, communities were able to receive some of our materials in their own languages,” highlighted Antunes.

Furthermore, Antunes recalled that, for many decades, indigenous peoples did not have the option of declaring themselves indigenous. In this sense, even in the first data collections in which self-declaration was possible, the results were still insignificant, since these populations were not accustomed to this type of declaration, as well as the methodologies used at the time did not allow for higher quality data collection.

The 2022 Population Census identified 8,567 indigenous localities in the Brazilian territory, with 391 declared indigenous ethnicities. In the 2010 Population Census, this number had been 305.

“Our refusal rate within indigenous lands and quilombola territories was less than half that recorded in the national territory as a whole,” highlighted Antunes about the last data collection carried out.

During the seminar, a lecture was also held on the use of indigenous data contained in the 2022 Population Census, which can be obtained from the IBGE Automatic Retrieval System (SIDRA) database.