Canada celebrated National Aboriginal Day on June 21, as it has since 1996, to recognize the cultural heritage of Canada's First Nation, Inuit and Metis people. But for most Aboriginals there isn't much to celebrate though their future promises to be better. Aboriginal people number 1.2 million, or 3.8 percent of Canada's population. Aboriginals lived in peace before European settlers came, traded with them, seized their land and herded them into reservations. First Nations live on reservations. Inuit, formerly called Eskimos, live in igloos in the far north. Metis are the products of mixed marriages. Some are doing well because their lands contain minerals. Many are hopeful because the Aboriginal youth population is growing faster than the national average. But for most Aboriginals, life is a nightmare of drugs, alcohol, crime, unemployment, violence, poverty and suicides. Aboriginals living in cities earn about 64 percent of the national average. On reserves, this falls to 49 percent. At least 54 percent of Aboriginal youth quit high school compared to 35 percent for other Canadians. Some 30 percent of Aboriginal youth are unemployed. Aboriginals are three times more likely than other Canadians to be victims of crime. A fourth of all of those arrested are Aboriginal youth. Eighteen percent of adult Aboriginals have been jailed. The People for Education states that Ontario's Aboriginal children - particularly those on reserves - receive “educational services and funding that is markedly inferior to other Canadian children.” Says Jennifer David, who heads an Aboriginal management consultant company: “We may pride ourselves in Canada for our tolerance and acceptance, but racism and sexism are still alive... According to Statistics Canada, indigenous women are over five times more likely than their non-indigenous counterparts to die as a result of violence.” Andree Cazabon, a documentary filmmaker, focuses in her fifth film, 3rd World Canada, on the Northern Ontario community of Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug which is struggling under Third World conditions to support eight siblings after their three parents committed suicide. Says Cazabon: “We have such a huge opportunity before us to bring Canadians on board to end the Third World and Fourth World in our own backyard. How can we be living in the capital of Canada and never talk about First Nation issues?” James Bartleman, a former lieutenant-governor of Ontario, wrote on the eve of Aboriginal Day that Aboriginals saved Canada from being overrun by the United States in the 1812-1814 war. US president Thomas Jefferson had stated that the “acquisition of Canada” would be a “mere matter of marching.” Outnumbered British forces and Aboriginal warriors, however, defeated the Americans. How did the British government and the people of Upper Canada thank their native saviors, asks Bartleman. “In Canada, the government began herding native people onto small reserves and selling or giving their lands to settlers. Then as the century progressed, the government launched a social engineering program ‘to kill the Indian in the child' by removing the sons and daughters of native people and sending them to residential schools, where they were often brutalized. And today, Canadians don't want to know when told that the government provides less funding for the education of native children on reserves than it does for the children of mainstream society. They avert their eyes when told native youth in despair at their marginalization from society are taking their lives at astounding levels on isolated reserves in Northern Ontario.” Bartleman descended from a native veteran of the 1812-1814 War. Ottawa Citizen reporter Elizabeth Payne wrote about an Aboriginal community in northern Ontario: “Suicide rates are five to seven times higher as in the rest of the province. Unemployment is 50 percent or higher on northern reserves. And education levels are low. Just 55 percent of Webequie residents between ages 25 and 35 are high school graduates, for example, compared with more than 90 percent across the province.” Perhaps the most moving message on this year's Aboriginal Day came from Liberal Party interim leader Bob Rae who said: “There is no fundamental human right more basic than the right to eat when you are hungry. In a country as bountiful as ours, truly no Canadian child should want for food. Yet this National Aboriginal Day, on June 21, tens of thousands of Aboriginal peoples, including children, will experience hunger, and the insecurity of not knowing when they'll eat next. The growing disparity between the rich and poor in Canada, particularly between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Canadians, has left 2-3 million men, women and children across the country food insecure.” Rae urged Canadians to rally to assist the Aboriginal people. Perhaps Canadians will listen and act. Most Canadians rejoice that their country is one of the world's best to live in. They forget that for Canadian Aboriginals it is one of the worst. — Mohammed Azhar Ali Khan is a retired Canadian newspaperman, civil servant and refugee judge. He has received the Order of Canada, Order of Ontario, the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Medal and the Queen's Golden Jubilee Medal.
