Evaluating Historic Fertility Change in Small Reserve Populations

Abstract

indigenous peoples of British Columbia living on reserves has been hampered by the quality and completeness of census and vital event data. Band censuses taken by the Department of Indian Affairs prior t1960o thwerse e often unreliable (Romaniuk and Piche 1972)Befor. 1920e yearl, y band population figures were based on periodic censuses and the subsequent yearly additions or subtractions of known births and deaths. Quinquennial censuses were established in1924an d continued until the creation of the Central Indian Registry i1951n whic, h was created to formally record the vital events of all Registered Indians. There was also no provision for the legal registration of births and deaths in the provinc1917 e prior to (Province of British Columbi1949)a I.n that year a voluntary system, which led to considerable inaccuracies and incompleteness in record­ing, was implemented. This system1943 continuewhe, n d until registration became mandatory by an amendment to the Vital Statis­tics Act. Although several prehistoric and historic demographic studies on British Columbian indigenous peoples have been conducted (Boas 1887; Cybulski 1978Duf; f 1965 Fishe; r 1977Keddi; e 1982;Kroebe r 1939), only Duff (1965 ha)s examined the area of fertility change in any detail. This paucity of data and research is addressed here by outlining a multi-step demographic approach to assess the feasibility of using genealogical data to evaluate fertility change in small reserve popula­tions. This assessment was made by relying on genealogical data from the Ahousaht and Anaham, two British Columbian reserve popula­tions, to assess fertility change over a recent retrospective period spanning three generations. Results from this case study show that genealogical data can provide valuable demographic insights into fer­tility change in small reserve populations.