As the number of Hispanics continue to grow, so too is the number of Hispanics identifying as “American Indian”.

Since 2000, the number of Hispanics who identify themselves as Amerindians has triple – going from 400,000 to 1.2 million. Amerindians is a blanket term used for the indigenous people of the Americas, North and South who are also Hispanic.

“Seventy percent of the 57,000 American Indians living in New York City are of Hispanic origin, according to census figures. That is 40,000 American Indians from Latin America — up 70 percent from a decade ago,” wrote the Herald Tribune.

José C. Moya, a professor of Latin American history at Barnard College told the paper, “There has been an actual and dramatic increase of Amerindian immigration from Latin America,” and points to the change in immigration patterns to the U.S. to explain the increase in Amerindians.