Saturday, November 11, 2006

Kids and Canadian native reserves

There are very few things that outrage me, but watching kids grow up on squalid native reserves does the trick.

The costs for the kids are great and the benefits are few. Even when I was a kid I recognized that the youth being bussed to school from the neighbouring native reserves had a rougher life than the rest of us, as was evident from their bad diets, misappropriate clothing for the weather, and behavioural problems. The promotion of Attikamekw, Oji-Cree and other languages is the only benefit I can see.

I've highlighted some numbers from the Statistics Canada 2001 Consensus for the Cold Lake Indian Reserve #149. Cold Lake is not unique, as a quick browse around this link to StatsCanada shows.

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