• Highlights

• In 2022, most (69.1%) of the Indigenous population living in permanent private housing units were faced with at least one type of situation of lack of basic sanitation related to water supply, sewerage, or waste disposal. There were 1.1 million Indigenous people in this situation.
• In Indigenous lands, 95.6% of Indigenous residents did not have any of the adequate sanitation conditions, equivalent to 120.4 thousand housing units with 545.7 thousand Indigenous people.
• The three most precarious situations existed simultaneously in 17.3% of the housing units with at least one Indigenous person. In these 107.5 thousand housing units, there were 470.2 thousand Indigenous people living, which corresponds to 28.8% of the total Indigenous population. Only 3.0% of the total population in the country shared the same situation.
• More than half (57.0%) of the housing units with at least one Indigenous resident in Indigenous Lands ha the three most precarious situations combined. There were 355.3 thousand Indigenous people living this way, which corresponded to 62.2% of the Indigenous residents of these locations.
• Around 55.3% of the Indigenous residents had their waste collected at their homes by a cleaning service or disposed of in a cleaning service dumpster. This proportion was around 35.6 percentage points lower than the percentage of the population living in permanent private housing units in the country (90.9%) in the same situation.

In 2022, approximately 69.1% of the indigenous population living in permanent private housing units had at least one situation of precariousness or lack of basic sanitation related to water supply, sewerage or waste disposal, that is, they had either no piped water supply to their homes from a general network, well, or spring; or no sewage disposal to the general network, rainwater or septic tank; or no direct or indirect waste collection by cleaning services. There were 342.1 thousand housing units with 1.1 million Indigenous persons living that way.

For this analysis, Indigenous persons who lived in housing units without walls or "malocas" were removed from this group, due to the characteristics of these housing units, in which the presence of water pipes inside the home or bathroom, for example, is not expected.

Among the Indigenous persons who lived on officially demarcated lands, the situation is even more critical: 95.6% did not have at least one of the adequate sanitation conditions, which corresponds to 120.4 thousand housing units with 545.7 thousand Indigenous persons. The data are from the 2022 Popualtion Census: Indigenous Peoples - Literacy, birth records and characteristics of the housing units, according to specific territorial divisions: Population results, released today (4) by the IBGE. In addition to the characteristics of the housing units and basic sanitation conditions, the publication also provides data on birth records and literacy of Indigenous persons. 

The criteria used for analysis are based on the National Basic Sanitation Plan (Plansab). In the publication, the survey sought to bring together the aspects of this classification and the questions in the 2022 Census questionnaire.

According to the coordinator of the Census of Traditional Peoples and Communities, Marta Antunes, the factors that influence these results include geographic distance and the adaptation of sanitation services to Indigenous lands. “To ensure adequate conditions, it is necessary to adapt basic sanitation solutions, such as, for example, building septic tanks that allow for proper disposal without having to connect to the general infrastructure, which sometimes exists further away from the reality of these lands. So, in addition to distance, there is the matter of how far policies are adaptable to meet the logistical challenge of ensuring basic and culturally appropriate sanitation on Indigenous lands,” she says.

In the Indigenous lands located in the Central-West, 99.0% of housing units with an indigenous resident had at least one situation of greater precariousness. There were 96.1 thousand Indigenous persons living in these housing units. The North, which had the largest number of Indigenous persons in Brazil, was also above the national average: 98.9% of housing units with at least one Indigenous resident were in this situation.

In 17.3% of the housing units with at least one Indigenous person, the three most precarious situations existed simultaneously. This totaled 107.5 thousand housing units in which 470.2 thousand Indigenous persons lived, equivalent to 28.8% of the total. In Indigenous Lands, more than half (57.0%) of the housing units with at least one Indigenous resident had this combination of inadequate situations, which reaches 355.3 thousand Indigenous persons or 62.2% of the Indigenous residents in these locations. When considering the total population of the country, only 2.5% of the total housing units combined the three situations.

Approximately 75.9% of the housing units with at least one Indigenous resident had a form of water supply considered to be closer to an adequate situation, that is, they had water piped into the housing unit from a distribution network, well or spring. This situation did not apply to 24.1% of the housing units with Indigenous residents (or 149.7 thousand of them). When considering the country's population, the proportion of housing units that had one of these categories as their main form of water supply was 94.6%.

Among the housing units with Indigenous persons on Indigenous Lands, this proportion fell to 35.3% (45.3 thousand). “In Indigenous Lands located in the Amazon, the predominance of dependence on natural resources is striking, whether through rivers, dams, streams, lakes, and creeks, or through well technology. In other areas, Indigenous Lands are dependent on the general network, which can be explained by their proximity to urban centers and the unavailability of local resources,” highlights Fernando Damasco, manager of Traditional Territories and Protected Areas at the IBGE.

Although the coverage of the general distribution network increased between 2010 and 2022, inequalities persist, especially when housing units with at least one Indigenous person on Indigenous Lands are compared to the numbers for the country’s total population. This was the main form of water supply for 83.9% of the resident population. Although it was also the main form for indigenous residents, this proportion was much lower (68.0%) among them and, especially, in the portion of this population that lived on Indigenous Lands (40.0%).

“There is a diversification of water supply sources in housing units with at least one Indigenous resident on Indigenous Lands with a much more significant weight than in the population as a whole or even in the Indigenous Population in general,” highlights Ms. Antunes.

Almost 65% of the housing units with Indigenous residents located on Indigenous Lands did not have access to piped water in their homes, whether from a public water supply system, well or spring, meaning they were in conditions considered inadequate by Plansab. This situation was observed in 69.2% of the Indigenous persons living on Indigenous Lands, which corresponds to 395.3 thousand persons. The proportion of housing units with Indigenous residents without piped water is almost 12 times higher than the total number of housing units in the general population in this situation (5.4%).

In 10.8% of housing units, where 282.4 thousand Indigenous persons lived, there was no piped water. In this case, it had to be transported in buckets, gallons, vehicles, and other containers to be used by the residents. On Indigenous Lands, this proportion rises to 29.7% of the housing units with indigenous residents, or 38.2 thousand. In these territories, 186.7 thousand Indigenous persons lived this way.

There was piped water inside the house in 77.5% of the housing units with at least one indigenous resident, where 1.1 million Indigenous persons lived. This criterion includes water that comes directly from taps, showers, toilets, among others, in the housing unit itself. In 11.6% of the housing units, there was piped water only on the backyard, outside the house. This situation was observed in 290.3 thousand Indigenous persons (17.8%).

In Indigenous Lands, there is a similarity between the proportions of housing units with water piped into the housing unit (37.2%) and those that had running water only on the land (33.1%). In the first situation, there were 184.6 thousand Indigenous persons and in the second, 199.7 thousand.

44.7% of Indigenous residents do not have direct or indirect waste collection

Just over half (55.3%) of indigenous residents of all types of private housing units had waste collection at their homes by a cleaning service or had it disposed in a cleaning service dumpster. This proportion is approximately 35.6 percentage points (pp) lower than the percentage of the population living in permanent private housing units in the country (90.9%). This means that the waste produced by 44.7% of the Indigenous residents at housing units where there was no collection went to other destinations, such as being burned or buried on the property and thrown on vacant land, for example. In 2010, this proportion was 71.8%.

In the Central-West, the inequality in access was even greater: approximately 39.42% of the Indigenous residents had direct or indirect waste collection by a cleaning service, a difference of 50.2 pp compared to the total number of residents in the same region in this situation (93.1%). In the North, the difference was also large. Less than half of the Indigenous residents (44.8%) had this type of collection, a proportion 33.7 pp lower than the average for the region's population (78.5%). The Southeast had the highest percentage (85.0%).

In Indigenous Lands, the proportion of Indigenous residents who did not have direct or indirect waste collection increased from 93.3% in 2010 to 86.2% in 2022. “There is a lack of services both for Indigenous residents in general and for residents who live on Indigenous lands, with the need to resort to other types of disposal such as burning on the property, burying, throwing away or other destinations”, says Ms. Antunes.

In Indigenous lands, 21.8% of Indigenous housing units do not have a bathroom

In 83.1% of the housing units, except for Indigenous dwellings without walls or "malocas", with at least one Indigenous resident (or 621.1 thousand), there was at least one bathroom for exclusive use, that is, one that was not shared with other housing units. This coverage reached 71.7% of the Indigenous residents, 28.1 percentage points below the proportion of residents in the same situation in the country (97.8%). There were, therefore, 461.6 thousand Indigenous persons without a bathroom for their exclusive use (28.3% of the total).

In 4.2% of the housing units with Indigenous residents (26.3 thousand), the bathroom was shared. In these units lived 105.3 thousand Indigenous persons (6.6% of the Indigenous persons living in permanent private housing units). In 7.6% of the housing units with Indigenous persons, where 208.5 thousand Indigenous persons lived, there were only toilets or pit holes for defecation. In 5.1% of the housing units with Indigenous persons, there were not even these options. As a whole, there were 31.4 thousand housing units, where 147.7 thousand Indigenous persons lived.

This proportion was even higher in Indigenous Lands. In these, there were 29.9 thousand housing units with at least one Indigenous resident without a bathroom or toilet, that is, two out of every ten housing units (21.8%) with at least one Indigenous resident were in this situation. The number fell compared to the last Census, when it was 32.8 thousand.

“Between 2010 and 2022, there was an increase in the percentage of housing units with at least one Indigenous resident having a bathroom for exclusive use and a drop in the percentage of Indigenous housing units with only a toilet or pit hole for defecation, bathrooms shared by more than one household or without a bathroom or toilet”, highlights Ms. Antunes.

44.8% of indigenous housing units had precarious sewerage

Sewage was mainly disposed of in rudimentary septic tanks, holes, ditches, rivers, streams, or others in 44.8% of housing units with at least one Indigenous person, except for Indigenous dwellings without walls or "malocas", which reached 391.2 thousand Indigenous persons who were in an inadequate situation according to the Plansab criteria. When looking at the population of the country as a whole, the main form of disposal was the general network or septic tank or filter tank (77.4% of housing units).

In the Central-West, the situation of inequality is more evident: in the region, 73.9% of housing units had the general network or septic tank or filter tank as their sewage disposal, while in housing units with at least one Indigenous person, this proportion was 50.0%.

As for Indigenous Lands, although the proportion increased in the intercensus period, less than a fifth of housing units with at least one Indigenous person had sewage disposal via the general network or septic tank. This access reached 9.42% in 2010 and rose to 14.0% in 2022. The presence of rudimentary pits also increased in these locations, going from 34.6 thousand (34.70%) to 69.2 thousand (50.38%) in the period.

Indigenous dwellings without walls or "malocas" have low access to the general distribution network

The publication highlights that approximately 96.8% of the 9.3 thousand housing units of the Indigenous dwelling type or "malocas" were located on Indigenous Lands. Therefore, the analysis considered all housing units, without distinction by location. These housing units can be of varying sizes, with one or more rooms, comprising one or more buildings and their name can vary according to the region.

In more than half of this group of homes (51.4%), or in 4.8 thousand of them, the main form of water supply was through rivers, dams, streams, lakes and creeks, a form that served the majority (52.8%) of indigenous residents of this type of home. This corresponds to 26.8 thousand Indigenous persons.

The second main form of access to water in these housing units was the deep or artesian well (24.7% of the total), supplying water to the homes of 24.9% of the Indigenous residents in these housing units, equivalent to 12.4 thousand persons. The use of the well was followed by the general distribution network (14.3%) and by a spring or well (5.0%).

The majority of the dwellings (68.2%) of this type did not have a bathroom. Therefore, the survey assessed the sewage system based on a universe of 2,976 housing units (31.8%). The sewage was mainly disposed of in a rudimentary septic tank or hole (15.1%), followed by other forms (7.1%) and ditches (5.3%). As for waste disposal, in 96.5% of the housing units, there was no direct or indirect collection.

Average number of residents in Indigenous housing units is 3.64 persons

There were 630.4 thousand permanent occupied private housing units in Brazil with at least one Indigenous resident, which represents 0.87% of the total of 72.4 million. The average number of residents in these housing units was 3.64 persons, a higher number than the average for occupied housing units in the country (2.79 people). In the North, there was the highest average in these housing units (4.53), followed by the Center-West (3.64) and the South (3.30).

Around 73.4% of those who lived in housing units with at least one Indigenous person were Indigenous. In addition to those who lived in the 630.4 thousand permanent private housing units, which represented 99.4% of these residents, there were Indigenous persons living in 1.4 thousand improvised private housing units (0.2%) and in 4.2 thousand (0.4%) collective housing units.

More about the survey

The 2022 Population Census: Indigenous Peoples: Literacy, birth records and characteristics of the housing units, according to specific territorial divisions: Population results presents a set of information on aspects related to the literacy of the Indigenous population, the existence of birth records for Indigenous children aged 5 or under and the characteristics of housing units with at least one Indigenous person. The main results, graphs and maps can be viewed on the 2022 Census Overview website, on the Interactive Geographic Platform and on Sidra.