December 1994 Volume XXI, No. -f.

Glancing Back, Looking Forward

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.,._.,-~

The journal ofthe International Federation on Ageing

43 December 199.;

Ageing International

Indigenous Older People in Industrialized Countries by Mario Garrett he first international expert-group meeting on indigenous aging, held in Albuquerque, New Mexico in July 1994, brought together researchers and practitioners to discuss the state of knowledge about indigenous elderly people and to propose a structured research agenda for this elderly population. The purpose of the meeting was to define an applied research agenda on indigenous elderly people. It was held under the sponsorship of the Am e ric a n Association for International Aging, the University of Ne w Mexico C enter on Aging a nd the American Center on Indian Aging. Funding was provided by the National Institute on Aging and the U.S. Administration on Aging.

Background Exchanges in international aging proliferated as a result of the United Nations World Assembly on Aging in 1982, which provided an international arena for national concerns. As a result, a number of international organizations and institutes that focus, directly and indirectly, on aspects of international collaboration and exchange were established. Recently, national concerns have again gained precedence over international exchanges in aging research. As a result, the study of variability across countries has started to give way to that of variability within countries. Domestic aging has become the primary focus of national funding agencies, generating a growing interest in minority aging. This, in turn, has made possible a foe~$ on the indigenous elderly-those populations considered native to a geographic area. Our meeting was motivated by the belief that older

members of in digenous populations represent a rare opportuni ty fo r cross-national research because they share a tenacity for maintaining their culture in the face of low economic and political standing. Older members of th ese groups ca me to adulthood more isolated from the dom inant culture than their yo unger counterparts, especially in industrialized countries. Thus, an understanding of older indigenous people might provide us with insights into patterns of support, morbidity, kinship structures, migration, livin g arrangements, re ligious influence, spirituality, service utilization, medicinal practices and cultural influences. Research on future generations might not be able to capture this same array of information.

Debunking Myths In 1982 , the World Bank estimated the numbe r of indigenous people throughout the world as standing at 200 million. Often referred to as the Fourth World, these people live on all five continents, in popu lous countries like China and on small islands like New Caledonia in the South Pacific. The perception of indigenous peoples as residing in a few small areas is therefore a misconception. The second myth is that indigenous populations are small, atypical and ethnic anomalies. To give some idea of the size and distribution of indigenous people, they number between 25 and 30 million in Central and South America and about 2.5 million in North America. There are 2 50,000 Aborigines in Australia, 240,000 Maoris in New Zealand, and 60,000 Sami (Lapps) in the Scandinavian countries. The largest populations live in Asia: 67 million in China, 51 million in India, 11 million in Myanmar, 6 .5 million in the Philippines, and 500,000 in Thailand. Clearly, these

44 Ag9ing International

December 199-+

populations are neither small nor gro uped in a few geographical areas. The third myth is that indigenous popul atio ns are relatively inconsequential when compared with the dominant population of a country. In fact , most states in Africa are governed by indigenous people. Elsewhere, these groups constitute a significant proportio n of the general population: Belize ( 10%) , Boli via (66 %), Ecuador (21 %), El Salvador (21 %), Greenland (90%), Guatemala (50%), laos (23 %), t'vlexico ( l 1%), Myanmar (30%), New Zealand (10%), and Peru (39%) . The fourth and final myth relates to race or eth nicity. This is a sensitive area since race is often an important yet implicit va riable in determ ining the status of a population but is rarely acknowledged as a causal component. While it is often assumed that indigenous people are non Caucasian, they are, in fact, of all races. Most of North and South American Indians, Sami, and Paciflc Islanders-Melanesians , Micronesians and Pol ynesians-have been shown to be of Asian descent while the Aborigines in Australia and the Ainu in Japan are related to the Caucasian race.

What is Known? Although specific demographic data on indigenous populations is scarce, we can estimate the global number of indigenous older people (60+) to be 16 million, or 8% of the total indigenous population. Thus, the size of this population in industrialized countries and Mexico stands at about 786 thousand, which suggests why it is necessary to increase our knowledge and why research on these populations should become a primary objective of gerontologists and other researchers in industrialized countries. One of the main objectives of the meeting was to identify the shared and unique features of these diverse groups of people. However, it soon became clear that very little is known about indigenous elderly people. The first question addressed, "Who is an indigenous person?," raised a host of problems ranging from concerns about census design and the validity of self-reporting to ethnographic sensitivity. In fact, indigenous people in general, and indigenous elderly people specifically, have traditionally attracted little research attention. Most censuses, for example, do not [equire a response to questions on race or ethnicity. It is .only in the last two censuses that the Aborigines have been counted by the Australian census. In Mexico, and elsewhere, the primary indicator of ethnicity is the

Age Composition for Mexican Indians, 1990 AGE

Male

Female

I so· I 1 75-79 1 I 1o-14 1 • 65-69 1 •

60-64.

•

55-59.

•

50-54.

-45-49 . . -40-44-

-35-39-

Soun:e: 1990 Mexican census, total Indian population:

8,411,972

-30-34-

-25-29-20-24-

• • • 15-19-10-14-

-5-90-4 605040302010

0

010

2030405060

Populatioo by 10,000

language the individual reports using. Although using short cuts like self-reporting to enumerate indigenous populations might sufflce within closely knit cultures, the possibility of tracking members of these groups in urban environments through such methods is difflcult if not impossible. Researchers need to be aware that such self-reporting might be influenced by factors other than race or ethnicity. In the United States, for example, the Cherokee nation grew by 10% between the 1980 census and the 1990 census. Although demographers know very little about how individuals behave when responding to questionnaires, it is not a coincidence that this growth came at a time when the tribe lowered the "blood quantum level" (proportion of Indian genealogy) to 10%, one of the lowest requirements among American Indian groups. And so the meeting began to conclude that even though we have access to national data, tracking indigenous populations is more complex than originally thought. The question that stumped most of the participants concerned whether to include Gypsies as indigenous people. This group epitomizes not only the technical difflculty of census sampling and the ambiguity of

45 December ! 99-J

Ageing International

Indigenous Populations in Selected Countries 1•2

AUSTRALIA CANADA NEW ZEALAND PACIFIC 4 USA JAPAN GREENLAND EX-USSR FINLAND NORWAY SWEDEN MEXICO

Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders Canadian Indians, including Inuit, Metis and Non-Status Indians Maoris Melanesians, Micronesians, Polynesians American Indians (545 tribes) including Alaska natives and Aleuts Hawaiian Ainu Inuit Inuit Sami Sami Sami Sami Mexican Indians (100 tribal groups)

Total

Total

Total

All Ages

60+

265,459 326,000 300,000 500,000 1,878,285 211 ,014 50,000 42,000 1,500 2,000 4,000 35,000 17,000 6,411,972

10,044,230

11,012 3 26 ,080 24,000 40 ,000 150,263 5 10,129 6 4,000 3,700 120 160 360 2,800 1,360 519 ,688 7

793,672

Sources 1. Number of elderly except for references 3, 5, 6, and 7 are estimated at 8% of the total indigenous population 2. Ethnic designations are those used by census bureaus. 3. Australian Bureau of Statistics, 1991 Census 4. Excludes Hawaii

5. U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1990 Census 6. U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1990 Census for 65• 7. Mexican Census of 1990 Additional data collated from J. Burger (1 987), Report from the Frontier, The State of the World's indigenous People. Zed Books Ltd. London

self-identification, but also the problems encounrered with a traditionally nomadic group. As members of a historically itinerant people who originated in northern India and now live chiefly in south and southwest Asia, central Europe and North America, Gypsies have not been constrained to living within national boundaries. Another issue concerned the definition of indigenous. If indigenous is meant to refer to an ethnically distinct population native to a geographic area, what about the issue of historical migration? What about the Celts in northern Europe? Do we consider them as new migrants or are they an indigenous group? The effective implementation of comparative, crossnational investigations is limited not only by such basic questions but also by the need for continued diligence. Such an initiative will require sustained attention to standardized measurement and reporting of the main indices of the aging process. Similar diligence is required to identify a systematic conceptual framework and analytic procedures applied in examining patterns both within a counrry and between ·countries. Also, there is a great need for more detailed tabulations by ethnicity within countries that

will facilitate further research inro indigenous elderly people. These goals seem to be well within the grasp of researchers and international organizations.

Initial Demographic Indices Even the longest of marches starts with a single step. From data provided at the meeting, we are able to generate basic demographic pyramids for the three indigenous populations that were the focus of this meeting-American Indians, Eskimo or Aleuts in the United States (Note: these are the designations used by the U.S. Bureau of the Census); Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders in Australia, and the Indians of Mexico. These pyramids begin to suggest some underlying realities about the dynamics of these populations. It becomes immediately apparent that these pyramids reflect high fertility and mortality levels across all age groups. Such pyramids are typical of develop ing countries, especially within the African continent. The American Indian, Eskimo and Aleut populations have the same age structure as Morocco; the Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders have a population pattern identical to Ethiopia, while for the Mexican Indian popula-

46 Ageing International

December 1994

cion, with a high infant mortality, the pattern is characteristic of Sierra Leone and Swaziland . The fact that these popula tio ns reside w ithin developed co untries makes them highl y unusual , posing a hose o f new questio ns. Having conjectured chat these are, in some ways, deve loping groups residing within developed countries, we need co ask whe ther these simila rities extend beyond population structu re and into economics. We inquired into che eco nomic condi tions o f o lder perso ns in sufficienc detail fo r assessing the relative importance of wealth and asse ts, income from employment, soc ial welfare payme nts (e.g., social security payments upon retirement) , intergeneracional flows o f moneta ry reso urces (reciprocal exchange) , and consumpt ion patterns of older persons. Preliminary data on the economic status of American Indians tends co support a broad similarity between indigenous people and populations of developing countries. With poverty levels among American Indian , Eskimo and Aleuts reach in g as high as 3 1% of the elderl y, such a hypo thesis might provide us with some direction in o ur effort to define a valid research age nda.

Health Indices At this po int, we kno w little about the possible causes of the shorter life expectancy for indigenous people or abou t the differentia ls in the health status of older indigenous persons with respect to sex, so cioeconomic status and residence (reservation vs. urban) , access to health services access, and medicinal practice. Nevertheless, some clues provide us with a way out o f this theoretical morass and into practical concerns. One area that combines health, demograph ics and social and political change is suicide rates. For most countries in the world, aggregate data suggests that the most vulnerable group is composed of males age 45plus. In the U.S. , the prevalence increases significantly for males above age 65 . However, if we look at disaggregated data on the basis of ethnicity, we find a remarkably different picture of events among the American Indian population. They reverse the general national trend. Members of this group are more prone to commit successful suicide before age 25 than any other ethnic group while suicide rates decline at later ages in contrast with the general population in the United States. One possible explanation for these differences is the younger population 's lack of hope. Having the living stand ard of a developing country while being exposed

dail y to the ostens ible, ye t generally unob ta inab le, benefits of an industrialized socie ty might produce despair among you th. Th e research to pics th at have been suggested address major issues chat are likely co shape the lives of indigenous el derly people and ho pefu lly influe nce social po licies a nd programs in ch e fu ture. In o rd er co effecti vel y li nk research with policy, a mo re explicit indication of the usefu lness of research co policy makers and policy development needs co be made. The research also needs to be mul tidiscipl in ary in focus, capable of yi elding quantitat ive and qualitative results that are national and regional in sco pe, and des igned co exa mine dynam ic perspectives (so cial / politi cal / health). There is clearly a need fo r both cross-sectional and longitudinal studies. At a minimum , this meeting promoted an understanding among researchers co ncerned with indigenous elderly people about possible research agendas. The ai m was, however, more ambitious-to strengthen cross-national research exchange on indigenous elderly people through the practical process of collaborating in a well-defi ned research activity. The urge ncy of doing resea rch amo ng indigenous older people is undersco red by th e recogn ition th at this phen ome no n is transient, capable of vanishing without trace. • For a full report of the proceedings, co ntact: Or. Helen Kerschner, Director, Universi ty of New Mexico Center on Aging, 1836 Lomas Blvd., Albuquerque, NM 87131

Mario Dominic Garrett, Ph.D., is currently directing a project to develop gerontological training programs for American Indians in the state of New Mexico in the United States. He is based at the University of New Mexico, Center on Aging. He is also team leader of a project funded primarily by the United Nations Population Fund on the implications of the aging population in rural and urban China, which is being implemented by the China National Committee on Aging/China Research Center on Aging. Mario was the deputy directory of the Malta-based International Institute on Aging. He has lectured in Europe, North Africa, East and West Asia and North America. His primary interest lies in the economic conditions of elderly populations.