Ethnicity & Immigration - American Indian Settlement Patterns5

Cities with Lowest and Highest Populations of American Indians (Measures of Concentration and Isolation)

"American Indians," as discussed in this panel, include Eskimos and Aleuts. Data on their concentration (density of settlement) and isolation (segregation from whites) are shown in this graphic, for 1990, for the nine metro areas with the smallest and the nine with the greatest American Indian population. (For more of an explanation of "concentration" and "isolation," please see earlier panels titled Measuring Segregation and African American Settlement Patterns.)

The American Indian population is the smallest racial grouping in the United States. In this sample (lowest and highest populations in metropolitan statistical areas), American Indians are only a significant percent of total population (5% or higher) in Flagstaff, AZ, (27.8%), Tulsa, OK, (6.8%), Albuquerque, NM, (5.1%), and Oklahoma City, OK, (4.8%).

This population shows a concentration pattern unusual for a racial group. American Indians have a low concentration generally, and where they are most populous, there they occupy much more space than does the white population, which is used as the point of reference. For this reason, the scale, as shown, is somewhat distorted, but concentration values are shown in numerical format for reference. An enlargement of the upper portion of the graphic is inserted below. In this population, eight of 18 cities show less concentration than whites; three are close to zero, the rest range from 0.1 to 0.69, the level shown in New York.

Cities with Positive Concentration Levels

Low concentration levels indicate the inclusion in metro areas of areas of tourism with extensive lands but low levels of settlement, as well as spatially separated households, often housed in trailers, living on relatively poor land. Low concentration, in this instance, does not necessarily equal wealth. Albuquerque, with a very low-concentration American Indian population, in this sample, is the center of the Pueblo Indian culture, ringed by some 19 Pueblo reservations.

Minneapolis-St. Paul shows another pattern. This metro area had slightly over 24,000 American Indians (less than 1% of the Twin Cities' population) living at high concentration (0.615), comparable to that encountered in New York City (0.691).

The isolation measure for American Indians also follows the usual pattern: it is higher where the population is greater.

Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census. Housing and Household and Economic Statistics Division. Online. Available: census.gov/hhes.www.housing/resseg/def.htm. Presentation is from the work of Roderick J. Harrison and Daniel H. Weinberg, "Racial and Ethnic Residential Segregation: 1990."