Who are American Indians? Some observations about the perils and pitfalls of data for race and ethnicity

The data for race and ethnicity published from the 1980 Census are based on racial and ethnic self-identification of respondents. Selfidentification of race and ethnicity is problematic mainly because analysts are frequently inclined to treat this information as immutable. However, as this paper suggests, for some groups such as American Indians, racial and ethnic identity is an extremely complex phenomenon which has the potential to be highly variable. American Indians present an ideal case to demonstrate the possible problems facing analysts who do not recognize the potentially variable meanings of race and ethnicity data. This paper shows that, depending on how American Indians are defined, population estimates can range from less than 1.0 million to nearly 7.0 million. Furthermore, it is possible to isolate three types of American Indian identities in 1980 Census data, and each of these groups have different socioeconomic profiles.