Addressing inequities between Indigenous and Non-Indigenous persons in Canada
Calls to Action
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) has articulated its Calls to Action, including the formal adoption of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). In 2007, the United Nations announced the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), which built off the work performed by the World Council of Indigenous Peoples since the 1970s. Canada voted against UNDRIP at the UN General Assembly in 2007. However, the federal government recognized UNDRIP through Canadian Royal Assent on June 21, 2021.
Many of the TRC Calls to Action relate to governmental responsibilities. However, the Calls to Action address issues relating to health, education, culture and employment. As such, there are many Actions that Alberta Ballet can directly support or can address in supportive spirit.
Education
Educational gaps in Canada between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people are leading contributors to unemployment and poverty. Within the 2011 census, 29% of working-age Indigenous people in Canada had not graduated high school, compared with 12% of non-Indigenous people.
The legacy of residential schools will need an Indigenous education system to overcome the problems created by that legacy. However, educational systems for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous students need to be revamped, which needs to start by creating senior-level government positions dedicated to Indigenous educational content.
Age-appropriate curriculum—focusing on residential schools, Treaties, Indigenous peoples’ historical and contemporary contributions to Canada—need to be mandatory for all K-12 students, building student capacity for intercultural understanding and empathy. Doing so will require post-secondary teacher training programs to be fully funded to integrate Indigenous knowledge and classroom teaching methods, including full funding for Indigenous-specific schools to use this knowledge and these methods.
Business and Reconciliation
As a result of culturally inadequate education, employment rates among Indigenous persons suffer: Indigenous persons across the country are more likely to collect EI and social assistance. In 2006, 19% of Inuit persons were unemployed, 60% of those living on reserves and 9.4% among working-age Métis persons in 2009; the non-Indigenous unemployment rate was 7%. Income alone for Indigenous persons is 30% lower than non-Indigenous workers. Forty percent of Indigenous children live in poverty, compared with 17% of all children.
The TRC asks Canadian corporations to adopt UNDRIP, applying its principles and standards to corporate policies and operational activities, especially as it concerns Indigenous peoples and their lands or resources. Indigenous peoples must have equitable access to jobs, training and education opportunities among the corporate sector. Also, the benefits derived from corporate activities are dedicated to long-term and sustainable benefits for Indigenous communities.
Doing so requires education: education for staff and management within corporations on the history of Indigenous peoples, including residential schools, and education on governmental relations and laws as it concerns Indigenous communities in Canada. Corporations need a solid understanding of UNDRIP, Treaties, Indigenous rights and law as well as skills-based training in intercultural competency, conflict resolution, human rights and anti-racism.
Language and Culture
Residential schools sought to deliberately destroy Indigenous cultures and language. The Assembly of First Nations stated in 1994 that the maintenance and protection of Indigenous language is essential for understanding Indigenous ways of life: “a First Nation world is quite simply not possible without its own language.”
Language is essential to culture. By banning Indigenous languages among children at residential schools, it divided children from their parents, often creating feelings of self-loathing for their own ancestral heritage. This has now created a serious threat to many of the Indigenous languages across the country: in 1996, 26% of Indigenous persons in Canada reported their first language learned was an Indigenous language. By 2015, that rate had dropped to less than 12%. In Alberta, that number is just over 9%.
Although this is not the case across all Indigenous communities in Canada, as nearly two-thirds of Inuit persons speak their Indigenous language, only 2.5% of Métis do. The importance of protecting and enhancing Indigenous language and culture means Indigenous rights must include language rights through the enactment of an Aboriginal Languages Act. The TRC is advocating that Indigenous languages be considered a fundamental and valued part of Canadian culture. This includes an urgency to preserve them and an acknowledgement that these rights to language are reinforced in Treaties. Although the TRC advocates that the federal government needs to fund the revitalization and preservation of Indigenous languages, the process needs to be managed by Indigenous peoples and communities.
Principles of Reconciliation
The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is the framework for reconciliation at all levels and across all sectors of Canadian society.
First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples, as the original peoples of this country and as self-determining peoples, have Treaty, constitutional and human rights that must be recognized and respected.
Reconciliation is a process of healing relationships and requires public truth sharing, apology and commemoration to acknowledge/redress past harms.
Reconciliation requires constructive action on addressing the ongoing legacies of colonialism that have had destructive impacts on Aboriginal peoples’ education, cultures and languages, health, child welfare, the administration of justice, and economic opportunities and prosperity.
Reconciliation must create a more equitable and inclusive society by closing the gaps in social, health and economic outcomes that exist between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Canadians.
All Canadians, as Treaty peoples, share responsibility for establishing and maintaining mutually respectful relationships.
The perspectives and understandings of Aboriginal Elders and Traditional Knowledge Keepers of the ethics, concepts and practices of reconciliation are vital to long-term reconciliation.
Supporting Aboriginal peoples’ cultural revitalization and integrating Indigenous knowledge systems, oral histories, laws, protocols and connections to the land into the reconciliation process are essential.
Reconciliation requires political will, joint leadership, trust building, accountability and transparency, as well as a substantial investment of resources.
Reconciliation requires sustained public education and dialogue, including youth engagement, about the history and legacy of residential schools, Treaties and Aboriginal rights, as well as the historical and contemporary contributions of Aboriginal peoples to Canadian society.
Health
Suicide, diabetes, substance-related deaths and infant mortality rates are all significantly higher among Indigenous populations in Canada than among Non-Indigenous populations.
Infant mortality rates are anywhere from 1.7 to 4 times the Non-Indigenous rate. During the early 2000s, out of every 100,000 Inuit children ages one to 19, 188 died compared with the national rate of 35. Indigenous persons over 45 are nearly twice as likely to have diabetes than Non-Indigenous Canadians and six times more likely to suffer alcohol-related deaths and three times more likely from drugs. Suicide rates for Indigenous persons are twice as high than non-Indigenous persons and six to eleven times higher for Inuit. Youth between 10 and 29 living on reserves are five to six times more likely to die from suicide than non-Indigenous youth of the same age.
The required health policies and practices outlined by the TRC insist upon a federal, provincial and territorial recognition that the current state of Indigenous health problems are all connected to the intergenerational trauma of residential schools and federal policies that separated Indigenous people from their lands and their livelihoods, and into cramped, inadequate reserve housing without basic sanitary services. The TRC calls for an implementation of healthcare rights as identified by international and constitutional law as well as Treaties.
The federal government needs to establish measurable goals that identify and close health gaps among Indigenous communities and in consultation with those communities. Governmental transparency is required through regular publication of its progress along these lines, as it looks to improve trends on all health-related issues facing Indigenous people. Doing so requires the federal government to also acknowledge and address those Indigenous persons who do not live on reserves and the unique issues facing Métis and Inuit persons as well.