Edna Paisano

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Edna L. Paisano (1948–2014) was a Nez Perce and Laguna Pueblo demographer and statistician who helped improve how Indigenous people are counted in the U.S. Census.

Early life and education
Edna Paisano was born on the Nez Perce Reservation in Sweetwater, Idaho, on January 1, 1948. She grew up with three siblings. Her mother worked to improve education on the reservation, and Edna’s sister died young. Edna attended schools in Lapwai, Idaho, spent two years at Boise College, and then studied at the University of Washington. She spent much of her junior year in the hospital with rheumatoid arthritis but still earned a bachelor’s degree in 1971. She earned a master’s degree in social work from the University of Washington in 1973 and studied statistics as part of her graduate work. Edna loved mathematics from an early age.

Student activism
While at the University of Washington, Edna helped found an American Indian cultural center at Fort Lawton in Seattle. In 1970, she and others occupied the site as part of a movement to reclaim land for Indigenous people. The Daybreak Star Cultural Center was completed in 1977.

Career
Edna’s first federal job was with the Head Start program, working with Indian tribes nationwide. In June 1976, she became the first Native American to work full-time at the U.S. Census Bureau. Her work focused on the American Indian and Alaska Native census categories. She studied why Native communities were undercounted and led efforts to fix it, including a public information campaign to encourage Native participation. She developed a questionnaire to estimate undercount and suggested improvements to census methods. Her efforts contributed to more accurate counts in the 1990 census.

She also participated in the Interagency Task Force on American Indian Women. After twenty years at the Census Bureau, she moved to the Environmental Protection Agency and later became the principal statistician for the Indian Health Service in the Department of Health and Human Services. Edna retired in 2011 and returned to Sweetwater. She passed away on September 3, 2014, in Lewiston, Idaho.

Selected awards
- Bronze Medal for Superior Federal Service, U.S. Department of Commerce (1987)
- Department of Commerce Silver Medal (1994)
- Distinguished Alumnus Award, University of Washington (2003)

Selected works
- We the First Americans (1993)
- We the Americans: Pacific Islanders (1993)
- We the American-Asians (1993)

Legacy
Edna Paisano is remembered for making the U.S. census more accurate for American Indian and Alaska Native people. By combining statistics, community engagement, and advocacy, she helped ensure Indigenous populations received fair representation and resources.