Perspectives on 'Demography at the edge'

This chapter demonstrates that the study of Indigenous demography is far more than demographic in its roots and its implications. In many respects, this prognosis was realised because, although convergence was evidenced in some indicators like infant mortality, wide divergences remain and for some age cohorts may be expanding. Programs require evaluations and statements which locate them within the history of official inquiry in the remote Indigenous sphere. Skold and Axelsson proposes this transition for the Sámi of northern Sweden as akin to the three staged model of development proposed by Omran for the general population labelled as the epidemiological transition. The emphasis is on changing patterns of Indigenous mortality and fertility, and factors which have influenced these, since they are at the heart of describing and understanding how Indigenous people and their lives have changed and continue to change.