Senate Committee says Off-Reserve First Nations Face Unique Challenges
- EFN Staff | December 12, 2013
The Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights has tabled a report that says First Nations people living off-reserve continue to experience challenges distinct from those faced by First Nations people living on reserve.
Entitled Recognising Rights: Strengthening Off-Reserve First Nations Communities, the report examines issues relating to the human rights of First Nations band members who reside off-reserve, with an emphasis on the current federal policy framework.
The report focuses on currently available federal programs, the source and nature of the rights of off-reserve First Nations people, off-reserve First Nations people's relationships with reserve communities, their access to services, the role of friendship centres, and off-reserve First Nations women and girls.
"Off-reserve First Nations people are a very young and growing population," the report says. "Although some members of this population are thriving, as a group, they score lower on virtually all social and economic indices than do non-Aboriginal people.
"This suggests that there are particular challenges associated with service delivery to off-reserve First Nations people," the report continues.
The report found health concerns in First Nations people living off-reserve, noting they are significantly more likely to be living with chronic illnesses and significantly less likely to have seen a family doctor in the last year than non-Aboriginal epople.
"Our people do not want to access health services because they are treated differently," Jaqueline Anaquod told the committee. "There is no culturally safe or sensitive care in any of our health care systems."
The report looks at access to services for off-reserve First Nations people, the work of friendship centres in their provision of services, and the additional burdens of off-reserve First Nations women and girls.
Sasha Marshall, Executive Director of the Circle of Life Thunderbird House in downtown Winnipeg, told the committee that young girls often have to take on parental responsibilities for younger siblings.
"Little girls 10, 11, 12 years old are raising their siblings...walking them to school and walking them home; they are making lunch and making dinner," she said, pointing to children who were torn from their homes at a young age, then spent many in a residential school do not know how to parent because they were never parented.
"They do not know how to teach empathy because they were not shown empathy, and it begins this vicious cycle."
The committee also heard that First Nations women continue to feel compelled to leave their reserves because of violence, poverty, inequitable matrimonial real property laws, and because of fears that if they cannot find better support in the city, they risk losing custody of their children.
The committee heard from 84 witnesses and held hearings in Ottawa and travelled across Western Canada to hear directly from governments, Aboriginal organizations, service providers, and individuals in Winnipeg, Saskatoon, and Vancouver.
Steven Eastman, co-chair of the Urban Aboriginal Peoples Advisory Committee for the City of Vancouver, told the committee: "We are forced into, for lack of a better word, urban ghettos to access these services because that is where they are and that is where we can afford to live a lot of times. Our people are trying hard to overcome that and working very hard to succeed but we do lack services where people live."
The report notes the important role Friendship Centres can play in the lives of First Nations people living off-reserve, also noting that many representatives from such centres worry about under-funding.
In its conclusion, the committee says it hopes the report will "generate dialogue on the important issues affecting the human rights of off-reserve First Nations band members," and goes on to urge the federal government and stakeholders to take the report's evidence into consideration.
The final report will be submitted by the end of this year.