"Our Aboriginals ... Our Indians." Have you heard those words used? By politicians (including the Prime Minister) and by people in Corporate Canada too?

I have! "We are proud of Our Aboriginals." "I'm pleased to see Our Indians here with us tonight." etc...etc.

The point is that Canadians, rather than expressing their so-called 'ownership of us', need a reality check ... not only are we equal to them in all ways, we are special, unique and ... they need us!

We are a powerful force to be reckoned with and our potential influence is not to be taken lightly. I am not talking about the Constitution and Aboriginal Rights or favourable court decisions.

I am talking about our potential influence on Tomorrow's Canada, her citizens, economy and culture. Although Aboriginal families are having fewer babies than we once did, our 'fertility rates' continue to be much higher than the general population.

While mainstream society will go begging to fill jobs, we have more young people who are potential employees. Those numbers will continue to grow as the number of babies do. Elementary, yes. Noteworthy also in the context of what ails Canada's general population picture.

Statistics Canada* reported a significant drop in population growth. The 2001 Census shows "Canada experienced one of the smallest census-to-census growth rates in its population." The nation's population increased only 4.0%. Without the Aboriginal population growth, that figure would have been lower.

There will be more confirmation of that when the analysts 'crunch the data' about Aboriginal People in the Census 2001 research. However, there is some proof positive already in the fresh numbers cited in total population. For example, Nunavut has a growth rate of eight per cent, twice the national average.

In an interview, Statistics Canada analyst Francois Nault told Turtle Island Native Network, "We believe it to be due in great part to the higher fertility of the Inuit population." That's not all. There are indicators throughout Canada said Nault, "We also measured growth rates for areas that are not influenced by metropolitan areas, and it's also growing a little bit despite a loss of population to migration." Huh?

It means these are rural areas, far from cities where people do not even commute, places where populations are growing smaller because people move to the cities. They also are places where there "tends to be a higher concentration of Aboriginals" with their higher fertility rates. Again, there is proof the Aboriginal factor has a significant influence on the Canadian population picture.

What does it all mean? The influence of the growing number of Aboriginals is not just on population figures laid out in some graph on a bureaucrat's computer readout. If you have a growing number of people of one group in society, there's more influence on that society and on all the factors people like Francois Nault analyse. "Oh definitely", he replied.

* From 1996 to 2001, the nation's population increased only 4.0%. The Census counted 30,007,094 people on May 15, 2001, compared with 28,846,761 on May 14, 1996. It is one of the lowest census-to-census growth rates Canada has ever had. Canada's population growth rate over the last five years was lower than the growth rate of the United States - the first time that's happened in 100 years. While it is low compared to the world generally, it is high compared to some other developed countries. Compared to European countries for example, Canada is growing much more rapidly. Canada can attribute this, in part to her Aboriginals.

BACKGROUND on Aboriginals and Population Issues

March 15th, 2002 - As Canadians talked about the latest Census report this week and how people are moving more and more into the cities, a professor from Simon Fraser University was telling Senators about the serious problems involving the mobility of Aboriginals in Canada. "The movement to the cities is creating the formation of ghettos." SFU professor of Business Administration, John Richards told the Senate Aboriginal Peoples Committee that urban Aboriginals move too much - back and forth from reserves, and within cities.

He said "One thing that sticks out immediately is that in these inner city neighbourhoods, the mobility among Aboriginal people is twice what it is among non-Aboriginal people. This cannot be good for kids completing school. There is a lot of churning back and forth." Professor Richards said there are some very serious problems for urban Aboriginal people.

However, he quickly added "I want to stress that the situation is better off-reserve than it is on-reserve by the kind of standard social indicators. Overall in the 1996 census, the average income off-reserve among Aboriginals was roughly one-third higher than it was on-reserve. This holds true even as you move through education levels and across provinces."

The Senators were told the migration of Aboriginals will most certainly continue because of economic opportunities, and he believes provincial governments are guilty of not paying nearly enough attention to "the urban Aboriginal phenomenon". Canada he said, also has not been doing enough, " I bluntly put it to you, as an economist that, in the long run, this migration pattern will continue. Hence, there must be much more concern about what happens in the cities. The federal government has been too oriented to concern itself with on-reserve people. In part, that is natural because Indians are federal jurisdiction."

Among the problems is poverty and the growing number of Aboriginals living in a very poor neighbourhood. What is a very poor neighberhood? 'Roughly 5,000 to 7,000 people in which the poverty rate exceeds one-third.'

"Very roughly, on average and in western cities, about 8 per cent of the non-Aboriginal population in the major western cities such as Winnipeg, Regina, Saskatoon, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver live in neighbourhoods that are very poor ... For those of you from those cities, you know the kinds of neighbourhoods that I am talking about. You will note that the distribution of Aboriginal population is very different. Overall, roughly one-third of Aboriginals, by identity criterion, are living in such districts. Of the mixed origin population - those who are ethnically, partially Aboriginal and partially non-Aboriginal - roughly one-sixth are living in such districts. That is about twice the rate of the non-Aboriginal."

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