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Volume 138, August 2015, Pages 179–186
One little, too little: Counting Canada's indigenous people for improved health reporting
Highlights
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- The study sought to improve how Canada produces health data on Indigenous peoples.
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- We innovatively linked, back to 1984, a national Indian registry to Manitoba provincial data.
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- Key to the linkage was a social-legal analysis of how Canada defined Indians.
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- Analysis informed a family linkage to find children missed due to legal ineligibility.
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- Study showed how innovative data linkages could address misclassification bias.
Abstract
The
way state governments, worldwide, count or do not count Indigenous
peoples has contributed to inconsistent reporting of Indigenous health
statistics. To address unreliable reporting in Canada, we reviewed laws
on Indian status and the development of a national Indian Registration
System (IRS) to track Indian status and eligibility. With this
information as a guide, we linked the IRS to the Manitoba provincial
health registry systems and were able to identify individuals with
Indian status for health reporting. To improve reporting, we identified
individuals often missed in this type of linkage. For instance, we
identified children and adult children who were eligible for Indian
status but not yet registered. Equally as important, we identified
individuals not eligible for Indian status but have Indian heritage
and/or represent potential individual Indian status eligibility cases
before the courts to right a historic form of identity sex
discrimination that has made them invisible in Canadian society and
health reporting. A familial kinship approach was used to identify
Indian children and adult children typically missed when a strict legal
entitlement criteria is used for data linkage. Our reflective
socio-legal data linkage approach expanded the number of Indian peoples
for health reporting purposes and demonstrated a feasible, inclusive way
to report on the health of Indians in Canada.
Keywords
- Canada;
- Indigenous;
- Indian status;
- Data linkage;
- Health administrative databases;
- Indigenous rights
Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
