“A recent surge of suicide attempts in the Cree community of Attawapiskat, Ontario drew national attention to the effects that poor living conditions and housing shortages have on First Nation children. The outrageous reality is that the majority of children on First Nation reserves in Canada live in poverty and their situation is getting worse. This report includes poverty rates on reserves and in the territories, something never before examined using the 2011 National Household Survey data. The most recently available data show that child poverty rates for status First Nations children living on-reserve rose to a staggering 60% in 2010. By contrast, poverty rates among Indigenous children living off reserve have improved somewhat, while non-Indigenous children have seen little change to their circumstances since 2005.
Disaggregating child poverty by identity reveals three broad groupings, or tiers, of suffering in Canada.
The worst is among status First Nation children, 51% of whom live in poverty, rising to 60% on reserve. A second tier encompasses other Indigenous children and disadvantaged groups. The children of immigrants in Canada suffer a child poverty rate of 32% while racialized (visible minority) children have a poverty rate of 22%. Between these are found non-status First Nations children (30%), Inuit children (25%) and Métis children (23%). The third tier of poverty consists of children who are non-Indigenous, non-racialized and non-immigrant, where the rate of 13% is similar to the average among all countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (oecd).”
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