WASHINGTON — Even in the fight to decolonize data, Abigail Echo-Hawk thinks about how she’s counted, whether that’s on a census form, in the doctor’s office or for a survey.

She’s a citizen of Pawnee Nation in Oklahoma and a member of the Upper Ahtna Athabaskan people of Mentasta Lake in Alaska.

“I am blessed to be able to contribute to both of those tribes in the way that I should as a tribal person,” she said. “And we deserve to be seen and counted in all of that.”

The public health researcher and director of the Urban Indian Health Institute has trained her two sons to not check the box, “Hispanic,” on any and all data forms because they are also Mexican.

“We know now that if they mark Hispanic/Mexican and American Indian/Alaska Native that they’re not counted as Native people,” Echo-Hawk said. “They’re only counted as Hispanic which is kind of sad because it is an essential part of their identity. …

“It’s another way that we’re made invisible within the data,” she said. “We have a lot of multiracial, multi-tribal folks and we want to make sure that they’re all counted.”

And she’s right. Anecdotally, if you’re a Native person, chances are you know someone who is multiracial, from multiple tribes, both, and all the in-between. It’s also the historical and social context that is often missing in the data narrative that western science has created and applied.

Those issues are on top of the wide range of tribal citizenship criteria set by 574 federally recognized tribes, including blood quantum, lineage, needing to be born on the reservation for enrollment, matrilineal lineage, no dual enrollment, and more. Non-Native people usually don’t understand these issues unless they are allies or in conversation with Native people or tribal leaders.

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