Area draws diverse Native Americans
As the nation celebrates Native American Heritage Month this November, new data shows Harris County is home to the most diverse Native American population in Texas.
According to recently released data from the U.S. Census Bureau, Harris County’s population includes people from 150 Native American groups — dozens more than any other Texas county, and 11th most in the nation. Harris County’s Native American population also ranks as the fourth largest in the nation.
The data was collected during the 2020 Decennial Census and captures the national population with an unprecedented degree of granularity — nearly 1,500 unique ethnic groups are represented. Harris County alone has residents representing 364 of those groups.
A majority of Texans shared detailed information in the survey, but the results aren’t perfect because the data relies on self-identification. For example, the entire population of Loving County — home to only a few dozen people — did not share the specific groups they identify with.
The U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs uses the term “Native American” to refer to all people from Indigenous populations of the land now considered the U.S., including people identifying as Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians, Chamorros and American Samoans. Also included are people from the First Nations in Canada and Indigenous communities in Mexico and Central and South America who are U.S. residents.
Texas’s population skyrocketed from 2010 to 2020, growing by 16% overall with greater gains in the number of residents identifying as Hispanic, Black and Asian. During this window, the number of residents solely identifying as American Indian or Alaska Native (AIAN) grew by just 6%. However, the number of people identifying as AIAN in combination with other groups, like Hispanic or Black, more than doubled.
The Chronicle found there are just shy of 900 Native American populations represented in Texas, either alone or in combination with other ethnicity groups. For example, the Cherokee population would include someone who identifies solely as Cherokee along with a person identifying as Cherokee and Black.
Cherokee people are the largest Native American population in Texas, accounting for 0.4% of the state’s 29 million residents. The other populous groups include those identifying as Aztec and Choctaw.
Because people can identify as multiple ethnicities, the populations of each group may exceed the state’s total population when aggregated.
Nearly 50 of Texas’s 254 counties do not have Native American residents, according to the data. The counties that do often mirror the trends seen across the state’s Native American population, with Cherokee people comprising the largest group in 178 counties. Aztec people are the biggest Native American group in 17 counties, including many of the state’s most populous counties.
In Harris County, people identifying as Aztec make up just over 0.4% of the population. Harris County residents are also part of 27 Native American groups that aren’t found anywhere else in the state.
Before the nineteenth century, what’s now considered the Houston region was originally home to nations like the Akokisa and Karankawa. However, as European colonists entered the area, they introduced waves of fatal disease and violence that devastated Indigenous populations, pushing some to the brink of collapse. Today, descendants of the Karankawa are working to revive the traditions of their culture and protect the land of their ancestors.
Since at least 1916, states have instituted holidays celebrating Indigenous peoples’ heritage. Former President Barack Obama codified “Native American Heritage Day”, observed the day after Thanksgiving, as a national holiday in 2009. In 2020, Houston’s city council voted to recognize the second Monday in October as Indigenous Peoples’ Day, acknowledging it as an alternative to Columbus Day.