Editor’s note: If you have visited the new Tribal Community Development pages on the NNCTC website, you may have noticed that we have shared quite a few resources lately. As Fred Fisher and our team are still in the early stages of building awareness of our new Tribal Community Development efforts, we thought it might be helpful to provide context for some of the more complex or less self-explanatory resources. This blog post is the first in what will be a series devoted to individual resources or groups of resources.
As decision-making entities, American Indian and Alaska Native tribes need reliable information, data, assessment tools, and research to make informed decisions and operationalize their strategies. Unfortunately, even as federal and state government, business, and nonprofit entities in the United States become increasingly data-driven, reliable data on American Indian and Alaska Native communities and people remains hard to come by. According to a recent NCAI Report on the Data Gap in Indian Country, AI/AN populations are consistently hard to count and hard to reach, resulting in huge data inequities. AI/AN populations were subject to the largest census undercount of any racial or ethnic group in 2010, they are often misidentified in vital and administrative records, and they experience a persistent digital divide relative to other U.S. groups.[1] Because tribes most often pursue data collection in pursuit of grant and federal program funding, the data that are reliably collected and made available tend to illustrate the deficits in Indian Country rather than tribal assets and strengths.
Fortunately, there are new and emerging data resources and community mapping tools available to Tribal leaders and their planning staff. These new resources have been designed to assist tribal leaders and planners focus on their Nation’s assets in addition to their unique and historical challenges. Links to a selection of these data resources and tools can be found in the NNCTC’s Community Development pages. I encourage you to click through and familiarize yourself with these tools. I am always available to provide you with more information and consultation on these and other data resources and tools. You can contact me directly at fred.fisher@mso.umt.edu or 720-810-2660. You can also complete a request for Training or Technical Assistance on the NNCTC Website and your request will be routed to me.
The Casey Community Opportunity Map
The Casey Community Opportunity Map was initially developed by Casey Family Programs as a data resource to support its national Building Communities of Hope initiative. This is an excellent tool for assessing community assets and challenges using data that are associated with the development of healthy and resilient children and strong families. With the awareness that opportunity and challenges vary from tribal community to tribal community, state to state, and from region to region, the Casey mapping tool is constantly evolving. The current version includes information on the impact of COVID-19 and provides users with the ability to disaggregate data indicators by race and ethnicity. Casey’s Data Advocacy Team offers no cost consultation to tribes on ways that tribal administrators and planners can incorporate additional data sets or tribal-specific data elements. These tailored tribal asset maps can be set up to be password protected and confidential.
US Census Interactive Data Tools
My Tribal Area is an interactive mapping tool developed by the US Census Bureau in 2017. The tool uses data from the American Community Survey and is updated every five years. The newest version has been updated to reflect findings from the 2020 Census. This simple and easy-to-use tool can assist in the development of demographic and economic profiles for all of the federally recognized tribal nations in the U.S. Data elements include population demographics as well as data on housing, education, employment, and workforce development.
US Census Racial Equity Mapping Tools. The US Census Bureau has developed an array of interactive racial equity mapping tools that may be of interest. These include:
Community Resilience Estimates in which the user can see data that indicate a community or region’s capacity to absorb a health, social or economic disaster;
Response Outreach Mapper that provides access to American Community Survey estimates and other information on difficult-to-survey rural and tribal areas, as well as recommendations on how to improve census response in these areas; and
Opportunity Atlas, which provides comprehensive census tract level information on children’s outcomes in adulthood.
A Note of Caution When Using US Census Tools and Data
When using Census-based tools in decision making, it is important to proceed with caution and be aware of the need to triangulate and validate the information with other quantitative and qualitative data sources.
For a detailed analysis and discussion of the limitations of Indian Country data from the Opportunity Atlas, see “The Landscape of Opportunity in Indian Country: A Discussion of Data from the Opportunity Atlas” by Donna Feir, PhD, Center for Indian Country Development (2019). Dr. Feir cautions the reader that:
The data are problematic in the same way virtually all government data on Native peoples are — being a Native person in the United States is not well approximated by single race classifications.
The racial classification of “American Indian or Alaska Native” is likely not the classification of concern for Native peoples and tribal governments. The data includes no information on tribal membership, affiliation, or ancestry. Arguably, for this data to be useful to tribal decision making or other policy, these political classifications are much more important than “race.”[2]
The Center for Indian Country Development
Finally, I want to draw your attention to the increasingly vast array of tribal community and economic development resources available at the Center for Indian Country Development (CICD). Launched in 2015 by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, the CICD’s mission is “to support the prosperity of Native Nations through actionable research, policy development, and community collaboration” to “unlock the full economic potential of Indian Country.” Included in the NNCTC’s new Community Development Resource page, you will find links to:
Reservation Profiles. This is an easy-to-use data resource tool that provides tribal leaders, planning staff, and program managers with reservation-specific demographic and economic data on reservations with at least 2500 people. The data are from the 2013-2017 American Community Survey. Using a simple drop-down menu, the user selects a specific reservation and instantly has access to a detailed profile that includes a useful age population pyramid on age and gender. Data elements also include educational attainment, employment, median and per capita household income and income by source and type. Poverty rates, housing and home ownership, housing cost burden, and access to broadband services by household are also included. The Reservation Profiles tool provides a quick and immediate snapshot of Reservation population data essential to tribal community planning.
An array of high quality and current tribal community and economic development research and analysis. A quick search will give you access to research on the impact of tribally owned enterprises and tribal-member owned business beyond Indian Country, webinar recordings featuring tribal leaders sharing the economic impacts and innovations amid COVID-19, and successful strategies for tribal business diversification, to name a few. Finally, be sure to search the CICD’s website offerings from Research Fellow Donna Feir, PhD, and from Casey Lozar, CICD Director. They, along with their colleagues, provide tons of relevant and timely analyses on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on tribal economies, strategies for recovery, and rebuilding Nations.
Stay tuned for more information on the community development resources found on the NNCTC Community Development home page. Please contact me directly at fred.fisher@mso.umt.edu or 720-810-2660 if you would like immediate support; or go to the NNCTC Website and complete a request for Training or Technical Assistance and it will be routed to me.
[1] The State of Tribal Data Capacity in Indian Country: Key Findings from the Survey of Tribal Data Practices. NCAI Policy Resource Center, 2018. pp 1-4.
[2] “The Landscape of Opportunity in Indian Country: A Discussion of Data from the Opportunity Atlas.” Donna Feir, PhD, Center for Indian Country Development, 2019, pp. 11-12.