by Clara NiiSka

According to a report, “The American Indian and Alaska Native Population: 2000,” released on February 13^th by the U.S. Census, there were 81,074 people who identified themselves as “American Indian and Alaska Native” in Minnesota.  Of these, 26,107 people said they were mixed-race.  This is a 162% increase from the 49,909 Minnesotans who categorized themselves as “American Indian and Alaska Native” for the 1990 census enumerators.  In 1990, about 1.14% of the people in Minnesota said they were “Indian.”  In 2000, about 1.65% said that they were either “Indian” or mixed-race including Indian.

The total Indian population in the United States in 1990 was 1,959,234.  In 2000, the total “Indian” and mixed-Indian population had more than doubled, to 4,119,301 people.  Statistics analyzing age distribution by “race” have not yet been released by the Census Bureau.

The “Indians” and mixed-race Indians recorded on the 2000 census include 729,533 “Cherokees,” 291,197 “Navajos,” and 180,940 “Latin American Indians.”  These three largest groups accounted for more than 1.2 million of the Indians recorded on the 2000 census.  The Census Bureau also reported 153,360 “Sioux” and 149,669 “Chippewa.”

“Racial” designations recorded on the census are ‘self-designations,’ meaning that if a person claims to be “Indian,” that is how the census-taker will record that person’s “race” on the official census forms.  The categories used in the 2000 census reflect the increasingly ‘mixed’ population of the United States, and people could claim to be as many “races” as they wanted on the census.

According to the Census Bureau’s analysis of the Census 2000 data, 43% of people reported themselves as Indians lived in the west, 31% in the south, 17% in the Midwest, and 9% in the Northeast.

Minnesota’s 1.65% “Indian” population was slightly higher than the national average of 1.5%, and the Minneapolis, with 3.3% Indian and mixed-race, ranked 7th among U.S. cities’ percentage of Indian population.  Anchorage, Alaska was first with 10.4%, followed by Tulsa, Oklahoma (7.7%), Oklahoma City (5.7%), Albuquerque, New Mexico (4.9%), Green Bay, Wisconsin (4.1%), and Tacoma, Washington (3.6%).

The cities with the highest total Indian populations were New York, with 87,241 Indians, and Los Angeles, with 53,092.

Part of the Census Bureau’s recently released map detailing distribution of “Indians” by county is published in this issue of Press/ON.

“The American Indian and Alaska Native Population: 2000” is posted online at  http://www.census.gov/prod/2002pubs/c2kbr01-15.pdf.   Additional U.S. Census data can be accessed via the Census Bureau’s website at http://www.census.gov.