Improving data on American Indians and Alaska Natives in the official statistics of the United States of America

Indigenous American Indians and Alaska Natives (AIAN) have lived in the United States for thousands of years, yet their inclusion in official statistics needs to markedly improve. The purpose of this paper is to examine and assess ways to improve statistical measures on AIAN peoples in the United States. It is not only the right thing to do, but inclusion of Indigenous AIAN would make U.S. official statistics more accurate and better reflect the American population. This paper has six parts: (1) Overview of Indigenous Peoples in the U.S.; (2) AIAN history and legal relationships with the U.S. government; (3) Overview of U.S. statistics; (4) AIAN in the U.S. census; (5) AIAN in selected major national population-based surveys; and, (6) conclusion. Discussions about the census and major national population-based surveys are focused on widely-acknowledged measures of a population's well-being, such as demographics, income, employment, education, life expectancy at birth, infant mortality and other health factors. Where possible, estimates are presented to show statistical comparisons and to illustrate the urgent need to discover why disparities exist and what solutions can be found.