Hitting rock bottom.(FIRST NATIONS--POVERTY)

Publication: Canada and the World Backgrounder

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COPYRIGHT 2006 Canada & the World

"Aboriginal Canadians, especially Inuit and Indians on reserves, live in poverty comparable to that found in developing nations." That's Globe and Mail columnist John Ibbitson writing in November 2005. But, Mr. Ibbitson could have written that sentence 30, 40, or 50 years ago and it still would have been accurate

Living conditions for Canada's Native people have been a national embarrassment for many decades and there have been countless pledges to deal with the problem.

"A report released by the Association for Canadian Studies has found First Nations people in Saskatchewan have the highest rate of poverty in the country ... The think tank, based in Montreal, found that 42.6% of Aboriginal people in Saskatchewan live below the low-income cutoff point (the poverty line) compared with 9.2% of Saskatchewan's non-Aboriginal population. Across Canada, the Aboriginal population had a low-income rate of 31.2%. In Saskatchewan urban centres, the poverty rate went as high as 51.3%." That quote comes from 2004.

Even those who move to cities for economic reasons are way behind their non-Aboriginal counterparts: in 1995, the median income was 40 percent higher among off-reserve Aboriginals compared with those on reserve, but their incomes still were about 60 percent less than those of non-Aboriginals.

Along with the poverty go a host of social ills--overcrowded housing, unemployment, substance abuse, poor health, crime.

In October 2000, the Ontario Federation of Indian Friendship Centres (OFIFC) released a report entitled Urban Aboriginal Child Poverty: A Status Report on Aboriginal Children and their Families in Ontario. The report cites some statistics that reveal the extent of the problem:

* 52.1% of all Aboriginal children are poor;

* 12 percent of Aboriginal families are headed by parents under the age of 25 years;

* 27 percent of Aboriginal families are...

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