KELOWNA, B.C. – Canada on Friday pledged $4.3 billion in a landmark deal with Indian and northern Inuit communities to help lift them from the poverty and disease that has plagued their neglected reservations for more than a century.
The agreement commits federal funding over the next decade for widespread improvements in housing, health care, education and economic development for the nearly 1 million aboriginal peoples of Canada: Indian tribes known as First Nations and Inuits, the aboriginal Canadians of the northeastern and Arctic territories.
Prime Minister Paul Martin and the premiers of Canada’s 13 provinces and territories announced the agreement after a two-day summit with five native organizations.
“Aboriginal Canadians have no desire for more rhetoric; they have needs and those needs demand attention. It’s as simple as that. We all know that there are serious problems in too many aboriginal communities and it’s heartbreaking to hear the stories of lost promise,” Martin said after the conclusion of the two-day summit in Kelowna, a western frontier town.
Canada’s native reserves are dramatically short of housing and safe drinking water, their high school graduation rate is just over half the national average, and life expectancy for Indians is five to seven years lower than for nonaboriginals.
The infant mortality rate is 20 percent higher among First Nations, suicide rates are threefold and teen pregnancies are nine times higher than the national average.
Phil Fontaine, national chief of the Assembly of First nations, praised the agreement and said he would demand federal officials follow through.
“We will close the gap in the quality of life between our people and other Canadians. That will be our legacy for the coming generations,” he said. “We have conquered our own cynicism. We’ve seen how far we can go in just two days; imagine how far we can go in 10 years.”
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