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 interested in census tracts and other small-area geographic entities. (For details, see, “Local Census Statistical Areas Committees and Other Local Assistance.”)

The delineation of census blocks for the 1990 census offered another program in which the tribes could become involved. Within BNAs, census tracts, and BGs, the Census Bureau assigns a three-digit census block number to each polygon formed by the intersection of geographic features. (For details, see, “Census Blocks and Block Groups.”) In preparation for the 1990 census, the Census Bureau provided an opportunity for State governments to identify block boundaries as part of its preparations to meet the requirements of Public Law 94-171. (For details, see, “Voting Districts.”) At the same time, the Census Bureau provided an opportunity for American Indian tribes to suggest visible geographic features that they would like to have used as census block boundaries, a process called the Block Definition Project (BDP). Participants in both the P.L. 94-171 program and the BDP had to identify, during a visit to one of the Census Bureau’s 12 regional offices, the visible block boundaries they wanted held. In spite of this constraint, for tribal officials who participated, the BDP provided an opportunity to have input into the TIGER data base and to learn what geographic features would appear on the 1990 census maps for their reservations.

Still another 1990 geographic program of interest to American Indian and Alaska Native communities was the Census Designated Place (CDP) Program. CDPs are population concentrations that function as a community, are locally recognized as such, but are not legally incorporated. To recognize the significance of unincorporated communities located on American Indian reservations, the Census Bureau lowered the minimum population size for such CDPs to 250 people for the 1990 census. This provision applied to reservations in the coterminous 48 States.

In Alaska, communities often are very small, and several families sometimes constitute a settlement that functions economically and socially as a community with a cohesiveness characterized by larger places in other American Indian and Alaska Native Areas5-15