Before every census, the federal government picks several test sites, focusing on rural and hard-to-reach areas. But the U.S. Census Bureau has canceled its plans at four of the six locations, including two regions covering Arizona tribal lands.
Still, this isn’t the first time the Census has changed course with Indian Country.
In fact, this also happened in 2016 when a pair of reservations in Washington and South Dakota — the Colville Confederated Tribes and Standing Rock Sioux respectively — were nixed, citing budget uncertainty and funding shortages.
“Now we’re in 2026,” said Saundra Mitrovich, who is a census consultant and member of the Berry Creek Rancheria of Maidu Indians of California. “In the last two decennials, not only have we had the undercount, but we’ve had this cancellation of test sites for tribal areas twice.”
Mitrovich also co-leads the Natives Count Coalition, a group founded in 2020 by the National Congress of American Indians, National Urban Indian Family Coalition and Native American Rights Fund.
She’s concerned about how the Trump administration is considering to use postal service staff to replace temporary census workers to help cut down on costs, sharing “a lot of the households are left invisible to the census, and they also have non-traditional addresses.”
In 2020, the nonprofit Native American Rights Fund reported that more than 80% of all registered Indigenous voters in Arizona — outside of metro Phoenix and Tucson — rely solely on P.O. boxes.
This time around, San Carlos and White Mountain Apache homes in Arizona as well as Cherokee households within North Carolina’s Qualla Boundary are being left out of this dress rehearsal ahead of the 2030 count.
The Census Bureau would not tell KJZZ why.
“So when you think about it, it’s frustrating,” added Mitrovich. “How are we gonna say that we’re going to carry out this fair and full representation that the survey is supposed to provide of the country?”
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