KEYWORDS: American Indian, reservation housing, translation, Tribal Liaison, local hires
ABSTRACT
Census coverage and enumeration strategies in the rural American Indian reservation community of Isleta are discussed in this Ethnographic Evaluation of the 1990 Decennial Census Report # 23. The author, Dr. Jojola commends the 1990 Census effort on Isleta because no housing units in the sample area were missed and the total census count was close to the resolved count of Census Day residents. The sample area was located in an project of single family homes. Dr. Jojola attributes the excellent count to the Census Bureau's hiring of American Indian enumerators who could explain and translate from the English on the census form into the American Indian language Isletan Tiwa and who knew the locale and the families. He also notes that the Isletan respondents were cooperative, familiar with censuses, and sophisticated about filling out government forms.
Despite problems and misunderstandings surrounding the Tribal Liaison's role, mapping, and some of the enumeration procedures used, census field work evidently overcame many barriers. Among the census enumeration records from this housing project in Isleta Pueblo appear the names and demographic characteristics of individuals who were erroneously enumerated. The erroneously enumerated were not residents as of Census Day and most of them had a usual home somewhere else than in the sample area. Those records compensate for the individuals resident on Census Day who were not enumerated in the census. Dr. Jojola details some of the social, economic and tribal political dynamics that led to assert they be enumerated (erroneously) and to the different circumstances (such as the placement of minors) that led to omissions.
Dr. Theodore S. Jojola, is the director of the Native American Studies Center, a professor of urban planning, and the principal investigator for Joint Statistical Agreement 90-02 for the University of New Mexico. He is enrolled at Isleta.
Citation:Jojola 1992 Ethnographic Evaluation of the 1990 Decennial Census Report # 23. Final report for Joint Statistical Agreement 90-02 with the University of New Mexico.PREM # 207
