[1] Both historically and in recent times, they have been subjected to violence and oppression, ranging from land theft to massacres to the targeted killings of Indigenous activists and politicians.

[14] This demographic decline can be explained by liberal policies implemented by new republican elites, which tried to abolish indigenous collective land ownership previously recognized by the Spanish monarchy, and forced natives to assimilate in mainstream national culture.

[citation needed] Anthropologist Tom Dillehay dates the earliest hunter-gatherer cultures on the continent at almost 10,000 BC, during the late Pleistocene and early Holocene periods.

[20] Dillehay has noted that Tibitó, located just north of Bogotá, is one of the oldest known and most widely accepted sites of early human occupation in Colombia, dating from about 9,790 BC.

[20] Beginning in the 1st millennium BC, groups of Amerindians including the Muisca, Quimbaya, Tairona, Calima, Zenú, Tierradentro, San Agustín, Tolima, and Urabá became skilled in farming, mining, and metalcraft; and some developed the political system of cacicazgos with a pyramidal structure of power headed by caciques.

Colombia's Indigenous culture evolved from three main groups—the Quimbaya, who inhabited the western slopes of the Cordillera Central; the Chibchas; and the Kalina (Caribs).

[20] When the Spanish arrived in 1509, they found a flourishing and heterogeneous Amerindian population that numbered around 6 million,[21] belonged to several hundred tribes, and largely spoke mutually unintelligible dialects.

[20] The two most advanced cultures of Amerindian peoples at the time were the Muisca and Taironas, who belonged to the Chibcha group and were skilled in farming, mining, and metalcraft.

[20] The Muisca civilization was well organized into distinct provinces governed by communal land laws and powerful caciques, who reported to one of the two supreme leaders.

[20] The complexity of the Indigenous peoples' social organization and technology varied tremendously, from stratified agricultural chiefdoms to tropical farm villages and nomadic hunting and food-gathering groups.

[20] Similar in some respects to the Native American reservation system of the United States, the resguardo has lasted with some changes even to the present and has been an enduring link between the government and the remaining highland tribes.

[20] The struggle of the Indigenous people on these lands to protect their holdings from neighboring landlords and to preserve their traditions continued into the late 20th century, when the 1991 constitution incorporated many of the Amerindian demands.

[20] For example, it allowed for creation of a special commission to design a law recognizing the black communities occupying unsettled lands in the riverine areas of the Pacific Coast.

Indigenous people comprise 4.4–10% of the population of Colombia and their level of income as well as the indicators of human development as education and health conditions are behind compared to those of the rest of the Colombians.

More than in any other region, this period was characterized by a wave of Indigenous movements which practised a growing political power, since the resistance of the Chiapas of 1994 until the fall of the governments of Ecuador and Bolivia.

Poverty is another central aspect in order to understand the contemporary situation of the Indigenes of Colombia, which has been measured making use of the Unsatisfied Basic Needs (UBN), considering people poor who have insufficiencies in living, services and education.

This conception has survived since the colonization of the continent until now: generally, the Indigenous and also the black diversity is still seen as a negative element which has to be reduced or completely wiped out to guarantee the development and the modernization of Latin American societies.

[citation needed] Despite the Constitution of 1991 with the introduction of the multi-ethnic and multicultural character of the Colombian nation, the contemporary relation between the state and the Indigenous communities seems to be contradictory, particularly because of the presence of the demands of autonomy of the latter.

Until today the Colombian government has recognized the Indigenous groups only as communities, meaning that they are considered to be culturally diverse and therefore require a different political treatment to be able to integrate them in national society.