Census in crisis—further erasure of Indigenous Peoples?
2025-08-07
In 2013, demographer David Coleman wrote that the population census in its traditional form was heading toward its twiligh t. Its impending demise was being driven by digitization, rapid data transfer, and data linkage technologies. Declining census response rates and soaring costs hastened the decline. A decade later, that forecasted twilight is coming to pass. For the world’s estimated 476 million Indigenous Peoples, the census crisis comes at a critical point in their fight for rights and recognition.