Detailed Data for Hundreds of American Indian and Alaska Native Tribes

Navajo Nation was the most frequent response among people who identified as a single detailed American Indian group in the 2020 Census, according to new data recently released by the Census Bureau.

The 2020 Census collected data for a diverse range of American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) responses, including federally and state recognized tribes and villages as well as those that did not represent a specific recognized tribe.

We focus on four broad categories of the AIAN population: American Indian, Alaska Native, Canadian Indian and Latin American Indian.

From 2010 to 2020:

• The Alaska Native alone population grew 10.9% to 133,311, while the Alaska Native alone or in any combination population increased 45.6% to 241,797 (Table 1).
• The American Indian alone population grew 11.6% to 2,159,802, while the alone or in any combination population nearly doubled, increasing to 6,363,796.
• The Canadian Indian alone population grew 20.0% to 7,723, while the alone or in any combination population soared 390.4% to 72,701, an increase over 19 times larger than the jump in the alone population.
• The Latin American Indian alone population rose 344.7% to 766,112, while the Latin American Indian alone or in any combination population went up 390.4% to 1,319,523.

Among the Alaska Native Village Statistical Areas (ANVSAs), the Knik ANVSA had the largest AIAN alone and AIAN alone or in any combination populations.

The largest Alaska Native alone group in Knik ANVSA was the Yup’ik (Yup’ik Eskimo), with 5.2%, followed by Inupiat (Inupiaq) with 5.1%. Over 20% of the AIAN alone population in Knik ANVSA reported “Alaska Native” without providing a detailed race response.

In Barrow ANVSA, 59.0% of the AIAN alone population identified as Native Village of Barrow Inupiat Traditional Government, followed by 16.0% identifying as Inupiat (Inupiaq).

In 2020, the five largest American Indian reservations were all west of the Mississippi River (Table 7). On four of the top five reservations, a single tribe in each reservation made up at least 77% of the AIAN alone responses.

Distribution of AIAN population on reservations:

• Over 4% of the AIAN alone population in the United States lived on the Navajo Nation Reservation and Off-Reservation Trust Area. This is nearly 10 times more American Indians and Alaska Natives than the second largest reservation in size. Almost 90% of the AIAN population on the Navajo Nation Reservation and Off-Reservation Trust Area identified as Navajo Nation alone.
• The Oglala Sioux Tribe alone accounted for 81.0% of the AIAN alone population on the Pine Ridge Reservation. Similarly, 83.7% of the AIAN alone population on the Fort Apache Reservation identified as White Mountain Apache Tribe of the Fort Apache Reservation, Arizona alone; 77.7% of the Gila River Indian Reservation identified as Gila River Indian Community of the Gila River Indian Reservation alone.
• In the San Carlos Reservation, 60.3% of the AIAN alone population identified as San Carlos Apache Tribe of the San Carlos Reservation alone, while 28.6% responded Apache alone.

The distributions of the broad AIAN categories varied widely by state in 2020:

• Over 77% of the Alaska Native alone population resided in Alaska (Figure 1). Washington had the second largest Alaska Native alone population (6.0%), followed by California (2.5%), Oregon (1.8%) and Texas (1.4%).
• Over half (50.9%) of the American Indian alone population lived in five states; Oklahoma had the largest American Indian alone population (14.2%), followed by Arizona (12.9%), California (9.9%), New Mexico (9.1%) and Texas (4.8%).
• Nearly a third (32.7%) of the Latin American Indian alone population lived in California, followed by Texas (11.6%), New York (8.1%), Illinois (6.3%) and Florida (4.6%).