Coverage Area

Data on Indigenous Peoples are not consistently available across all circumpolar regions. The data presented in CircHOB are regionally based and not broken down by ethnicity or nationality within regions.

The whole of Alaska and Greenland are included. Northern Canada includes only the three northern territories, all located above 60º N latitude. While the Nunavik region in northern Québec province and the Nunatsiavut region in Labrador are often regarded as part of the Canadian Arctic, health data from these regions are generally difficult to extract from the provinces to which they belong.

The northernmost counties in Norway, Sweden, and Finland constitute the northern regions of those countries. [“County” here refers to fylke in Norway, län in Sweden, and lääni in Finland].  In Finland, the lääni was abolished in 2010 and replaced by the regional state administrative agency (aluehallintovirasto or AVI). There was, however, no change to the boundaries of the two northernmost regions of Oulu (now called Pohjois-Suomi) and Lappi.

The situation in Russia is quite complex. The Russian Federation is composed of different types of administrative divisions called federal “subjects” (subyekty), including republic, kray, oblast, autonomous okrug, and federal city, with varying degrees of autonomy, but all sending representatives to the Federal Council (Sovet Federatsii), the upper house of the Russian parliament.Autonomous okrugs (hereafter AO), with the exception of Chukotka, are generally part of some higher level units such as oblasts or krays, and usually represent the traditional territories of some indigenous ethnic groups. Demographic and health data are usually available for these AO separately.  As of January 1, 2007, the Taymyr, Evenk and Koryak AO ceased to exist as distinct federal subjects and data on these AOs are no longer reported separately. CircHOB continues to list these three AOs but includes data for the 2000-04 period only.