Census questionnaires won't be mailed to reservation residents
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This is in response to a growing number of questions from Polson-area residents who wonder why they have not received 2010 Census questionnaires.
Some years back, during planning of the 2010 Census, representatives of the United States Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, visited the headquarters of each of the Indian Reservations in the United States, asking how they wished to be counted during the 2010 Census. More than 97 percent of them, including the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Reservation, chose to be counted the old-fashioned way, with a census taker going door to door with questionnaires, asking anyone home over age 15 for required information.
So even though the 2000 Census showed Polson as being 78.2 percent non-native, because it is on the reservation, Polson will be enumerated by census takers going door to door. That’s why Polson residents have not received questionnaires in the mail or had them delivered by census workers, with the intent that they be mailed back.
The enumeration of the reservation began Saturday, March 20, and will continue until late May or until the Census Bureau has been able to enumerate every housing unit on the reservation. The bureau’s list of addresses is obtained from previous census records, new housing units discovered during the bureau’s address canvassing operation in Spring 2009, all with input from the CSKT and Lake County government.
For the 2010 Census there is no long form, so enumeration of each resident should take no more than five minutes per person. Cooperation of all residents is urged, because an accurate count insures that the proper amount of Federal dollars will be returned to the community in terms of road construction, hospital and school improvements, and other projects for which Congress provides for Federal dollars to flow back to the states. The state’s Census and Economic Information Center estimates that every person not counted in the 2010 Census results in a loss to his or her community of about $4,000 during the ten years until the 2020 Census.
Anyone with questions about the 2010 Census is invited to call Bill Knowles, manager of the Missoula Local Census Office which is overseeing the count in Montana’s 12 westernmost counties. Knowles can be reached at 214-3200 or LCOM.LCO.3131@census2010.gov.
General census information is available at http://2010.census.gov.
(Bill Knowles is the Local Census Office Manager in Missoula.)
