The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
A new online Atlas of Urban Aboriginal Peoples developed by University of Saskatchewan geography professor Evelyn Peters reveals patterns that may help city planners, community groups and First Nations agencies. While many Aboriginal people remain in poor areas of Saskatchewan's major cities, they are increasingly earning good incomes and spreading out into more affluent areas. Mtis people, for example, are already distributed fairly evenly throughout Saskatoon. "More Aboriginal people are moving into the middle class," says Peters, who created the resource with PhD student Oksana Starchenko. Peters is also a Canada Research Chair in Geography. As of the 2001 census, about half of Canada's Aboriginal people were urban dwellers. About one in 10 citizens in Regina and Saskatoon are Aboriginal. "If we think of Aboriginal people living everywhere, we don't think of social challenges as Aboriginal issues," she says. "Aboriginal people are very much connected to the future of our communities." Peters explains that the data also point to the dangers in comparing the Canadian experience with that of black people in the United States. For example, the term "ghetto" doesn't apply very well to the situation here. Ghettos in major American cities can be home to hundreds of thousands of people, with a population that is more than 80 per cent black. In contrast, the Saskatoon census tracts with the highest Aboriginal populations top out at about 35 per cent. A census tract is a relatively small geographic area defined by Statistics Canada, usually containing a population of about 6,000 people. Peters concedes this point might be lost on someone living on Saskatchewan's mean streets. See 'Crunching' P.# Con't from P.# "Aboriginal households living in areas of extreme poverty talk about fear, housing inadequacy and problems their children face. It doesn't help to tell them they aren't living in a 'ghetto' as defined by academics," she says. "Still, areas of poverty and areas where Aboriginal people live in Saskatoon are not like U.S. ghettos, and it isn't helpful to use language that suggests that they are. The real challenge is to find out what is going on with Aboriginal people in Canadian cities, and not assume that we know by analogy with the U.S. situation." The atlas is the culmination of three years of crunching statistics from several sources, particularly the 1971, 1981 and 2001 censuses from Statistics Canada. The numbers are fed into an online computer engine that produces coloured maps that clearly show distribution of Aboriginal populations. Saskatoon and Regina are the first two cities to be included in the atlas, with Winnipeg to follow in the next few weeks. Peters expects Prince Albert, Edmonton and Calgary maps to be available by next summer, after which she plans to add socioeconomic data to the resource. "We've made this a resource to teach our own students about Aboriginal people," Peters says. "Certainly geographers will use it, and we're very much hoping that urban planners and Aboriginal organizations can use it." The atlas is available on the U of S Department of Geography website http://www.arts.usask.ca/geography.
