Excerpts from Harper’s Index (Compiled from various years)
By Scott Bentley
Number of “Indigenous crafts” workers in El Paso approved for aid to US workers laid off because of NAFTA in 1995: 26
Number of the world’s 6,000 living languages that are Indigenous to Papua New Guinea: 1,000
Number of excerpts from the Harper’s Index archive with the word “Indigenous”: 3
Number of excerpts from the Harpers Index archive that capitalize the “I” in the word Indigenous: 0
Number of federally recognized Native American tribes in the United States: 567
Number of Native Americans sought by a Pilgrim descendants’ group in 2000 to re-create the first Thanksgiving: 90
Amount the federal Individual Indian Trust could not account for, per Native American it served in 2004: $26,000
Estimated percentage change in the Native American population of California during the 1850s: -65
Estimated percentage change from 1500 to 1997 in the size of the Native-American population of the US: -76
Chance that a Native American woman could be the victim of violence in 1999: 1 in 10
Estimated number of Americans who made fake Native American arrowheads in 2006: 5,000
Percentage change, from 1980 to 1993, in the number of people calling themselves Native American on the census: +38
Chances that a Native American would die before the age of 45 in 1986: 1 in 3
Number of the 20 U.S. communities that applied to host nuclear-waste dumpsites on Native American reservations in 1992: 16
Number of U.S. presidents besides Bill Clinton who have made an official visit to a Native American reservation from 1937 to 1999: 0
Number of excerpts from the Harper Index archive with the words “Native American”: 19
Back to Main Page
Scott Bentley (Yoeme) is a poet from California. He received a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing and Poetics at the University of Washington, Bothell. He's been a co-curator of the Gamut literary series, Mineral School Fellow, Hugo House Fellow, and an editor at Clamor, Ghost Town, and Pacific Review. His writing and art have appeared in Yəhaw̓, Submergence: Going Below the Surface with Orca and Salmon, Paperbark, and elsewhere.