More than 3,000 miles separate Noorvik, Alaska, and San Antonio, as the crow flies. But this week, the 2020 census connected them.

In a remote Inupiat Eskimo community near there, the census began. It won’t start until March and April for the rest of us, but in the hard-to-count village, snow is starting to break up.

It allowed census director Steven Dillingham to travel by bush plane and snowmobile and knock on 90-year-old Lizzie Chimiugak’s door. The Native Alaskan elder became the first U.S. respondent of the 2020 census.

As a group, they’re hard to reach, so census workers get started early, when paths to their villages are open and before residents get swept into the fishing and hunting season.

On San Antonio’s West Side, a group of about 20 Native Americans from throughout the United States gathered to talk about similar issues and how to address the reality that Native Americans, like Native Alaskans, are the most undercounted by the census.

The young Native American leaders, most of them women, are members of the National Urban Indian Family Coalition based in Seattle. They represent urban Indians living in cities such as San Antonio, Las Vegas, Denver and Chicago. They run 40 centers or agencies in about 20 states.

They met at Progreso Hall near the offices of American Indians in Texas at the Spanish Colonial Missions, the nonprofit agency of the Tap Pilam Coahuiltecan Nation. AIT hosted them.

They’re gearing up not only for the census, but for getting out the Native American vote in November. The two efforts are similar. They must raise awareness, educate and encourage participation.

It’s all part of the first major national effort to push Native American census participation. The coalition says it’s a movement that has been building for two years.

Frankly, they sounded like they’re scrambling, but that’s not so unusual. Throughout the country, everyone seems to be scrambling to get ready for the count. Even hiring enough census workers appears to be a challenge.

Some of the native representatives come from states, like Texas, that showed disinterest in an accurate count and failed to provide adequate state funding for the job.

It’s self-defeating not to count every resident. The fresh data could translate into additional congressional seats, governmental funding, business and job creation and research in the state.

At stake is the distribution of that funding for roads, schools, hospitals and more. In Texas, which is growing so rapidly, an undercount would be criminal.

A great deal of what they discussed underscored the tremendous work ahead of them, convincing a vulnerable population to provide personal information to a government they don’t trust.

So, they focused on smart strategies, communication and collaboration. They vowed to share information and best practices and talked about a couple of novel ways to encourage more Native Americans to be counted.

They talked about using available resources, such as computers and internet access in public libraries, and of inviting people without access to technology to use it to answer the census in their own agencies and offices.

They’re worried about counting natives who are homeless and about messaging that doesn’t scare their communities from participating. They told stories of fellow natives who know too little about the census and the political process, of having to explain what a primary or caucus is. They talked about how public schools are failing their people.

They talked about some advances, too. A representative from the Little Earth Residents Association in Minneapolis spoke of getting a polling place in its community and about running for office and bringing her community along with her.

A native leader spoke about a project that created elementary school census ambassadors, who take home positive messages about census participation to their parents.

Another shared an idea heard at a college campus event, where Dreamers — undocumented students — signed cards pledging to fill out the 2020 census despite their fears.

The Constitution is clear on the issue of who to count. It’s everyone residing in the 50 states, the District of Columbia, U.S. islands and territories, and immigrants and visitors here at the time of the count.

The young native leaders spoke passionately about why they’re working on this effort — because they want to be in this fight, because it’s about Native American representation and survival.

Eddie Sherman, who’s on the coalition’s staff, picked up on that idea and brought it back to the coalition’s major national campaign, “making the invisible visible.”

There’s no better way of doing that than by being counted. That goes for all of us.

Elaine Ayala is a columnist covering San Antonio and Bexar County. Read her on our free site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | eayala@express-news.net | Twitter: @ElaineAyala