The Registrar, within the Department of Indigenous Services Canada (ISC), is required by the Indian Act (Chapter I, Section 5 (1)) to record the names of individuals who are registered under the Act, in the Indian Register. The Indian Registration System (IRS) is a database which records individuals' names and a range of non-statutory data.
The publication Population Registered under the Indian Act by Gender and Residence describes the IRS population as recorded on December 31 of the report’s reference year. Descriptive statistics are developed from the IRS and include gender, residence, registry group, responsibility centre, and region.
Data Organization
Registry groups with a total membership of fewer than 40 individuals are suppressed from the dataset, with the corresponding cells left blank. Furthermore, other techniques are in place such as suppression of individual cells smaller than 10 as well as suppression of adjacent cells to guard against residual disclosure. The counts of any suppressed cells, however, are included in aggregations to district, regional and national totals.
Differences from Previous Editions
Each edition of this report may include updates to methods or specific data limitations, such as changes in gender categories, suppression rules, or population thresholds. Starting in 2023, to reduce the risk of disclosure and to adhere to established privacy protocols, non-binary individuals were randomly assigned to either men+ or women+ gender categories.
These and other methodological details vary by reporting year and are fully documented within each individual report. Users are encouraged to consult the notes and explanations provided in each report edition when reviewing, analyzing, or interpreting the data.