The Bureau of Indian Affairs hasn't issued an American Indian Population and Labor Force Report since 2005 despite being required by federal law to do so.

The Indian Employment, Training, and Related Services Demonstration Act of 1992 (PL 102-477) requires the BIA to publish reports every two years on the Indian population by gender, income level, age and availability for work. Tribes submit data to the BIA for inclusion in the report but the agency doesn't verify the information and there is no way to determine the accuracy of the information.

Not every tribe participates, either. That led the BIA in 2008 to ask tribes for ways to improve the report.

The effort doesn't appear to have worked. Although tribes submitted information in 2010, the BIA says the data can't be used due to "methodology inconsistencies."

"The collected data from those 2010 methods did not adequately meet the standards of quality and reliability that are required of Federal agencies in reporting official statistics," acting assistant secretary Del Laverdure wrote in a July 2 letter to tribal leaders.

So the BIA is once again asking tribes for input on improving the report. Comments are due by July 30, according to a notice published in the Federal Register on May 29.

“The impact seems to be that problems in Indian country are misunderstood and, as a result, the task of dealing with them gets shelved,” Chris Stearns, an attorney, told Indian Country Today of the report snafu.

Get the Story:
Legal and Political Questions Surround Interior’s Decision Not to Release Tribal Jobs Survey (Indian Country Today 7/5)

Federal Register Notice:
Revision of Agency Information Collection for the American Indian and Alaska Native Population and Labor Force Report (May 29, 2012)