Indigenous Statistics: A Quantitative Research Methodology

In the first book ever published on Indigenous quantitative methodologies, Maggie Walter and Chris Andersen open up a major new approach to research across the disciplines and applied fields. While qualitative methods have been rigorously critiqued and reformulated, the population statistics relied on by virtually all research on Indigenous peoples continue to be taken for granted as straightforward, transparent numbers. This book dismantles that persistent positivism with a forceful critique, then fills the void with a new paradigm for Indigenous quantitative methods, using concrete examples of research projects from First World Indigenous peoples in the United States, Australia, and Canada. Concise and accessible, it is an ideal supplementary text as well as a core component of the methodological toolkit for anyone conducting Indigenous research or using Indigenous population statistics.

Maggie Walter is a Trawlwoolway woman of the Pymmerrairrener nation of north east Tasmania and an Associate Professor with the School of Sociology at the University of Tasmania. Her scholarship focus is inequality and race relations with Indigenous peoples at the centre of her research and she teaches and publishes across these areas. Her books include Social Inequality in Australia: Discourses, Realities and Futures (with Daphne Habibis, Oxford University Press, 2008) and Social Research Methods (2006; 2010; 2013 Oxford University Press). Maggie is co-editor (with Aileen Moreton-Robinson) of the International Journal of Critical Indigenous Studies, an elected member of the Research Advisory Council of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS), and a long term Steering Committee Group for the large-scale Australian Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Children (LSIC), Footprints in Time Study. She is also currently engaged in an on-going project embedding Indigenous research methodologies into post-graduate programs in Australian universities.Chris Andersen is Michif (Metis) and an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Native Studies at the University of Alberta. He is interested in the ways in which the Canadian nation-state has created “identity” categories relating to Aboriginal communities. He is a member of Statistics Canada’s Advisory Committee on Social Conditions, the Office of the Federal Interlocutor for Métis and non-status Indian’s Research Advisory Circle, the co-Chair of the Urban Aboriginal Strategy’s Wicihitowin Research Action Circle, and editor of the journal Aboriginal Policy Studies.