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Census Data Shows Wyoming's American Indian Population Growing

New numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau show that people in Wyoming reporting to be American Indian in combination with one or more races grew 24%.

In 2010 over 13-thousand people in Wyoming reported American Indian as their only race. However, those who chose multiple races - American Indian in combination with something else – was nearly 19-thousand. That’s up from 15-thousand a decade ago.

Amy Bittner is a senior economist for the state’s economic analysis division, which serves as the lead agency for Wyoming’s state data center program. She says new figures show that the American Indian population is growing.

“That population in Wyoming increased 24% over the decade which was faster than the overall population increase in the state of over 14%,” says Bittner. “So the American Indian population in the state increased at a faster rate than the state population.”

Bittner says that puts Wyoming 8th in the nation for the percentage of American Indians in its population , although she notes that numerically, it’s the smallest population in the country because Wyoming is the least populated state.

Additional Census data found that American Indian families tend to have larger households than the average residents, that American Indians had lower rates of home ownership than the rest of the state, that single-mother households were higher among Native Americans, and that the Native population in the state was populated primarily by individuals claiming Arapaho, Shoshone, Sioux and Cherokee lineage.

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