Relationship to all things on the land critical for well-being of Aboriginal people
Arctic survey looks at aboriginal well-being
Last Updated: Friday, March 23, 2007 - CBC News
Indigenous people across the Arctic feel their well-being is linked to balancing hunting and fishing with wage-earning jobs, as well as having more control over local decision-making, according to a circumpolar survey of more than 7,000 people.
The $9-million Survey of Living Conditions in the Arctic, produced by the Arctic Council, was a collaboration involving researchers, the Inuit of northern Canada and indigenous peoples in Greenland, Alaska and Chutkotka, Russia.
The results showed indigenous people across the Arctic share common experiences such as being sent to boarding schools and being prevented from using their native languages — experiences that have led to common social problems, project lead Birger Poppel of Greenland said Thursday.
"They define suicide, alcohol problems, drug problems, domestic violence as major problems," he said. "There's a general agreement across borders."
At the same time, survey respondents said that the more involved they feel in decisions affecting their communities, the more satisfied they are overall with life. In Canada, social ties with informal support among Inuit are generally very strong, the report found.
"Some of the striking findings though were a sense of local control was very strongly related to satisfaction with your life as a whole," said Jack Kruse, a researcher with the Institute of Social and Economic Research in Anchorage, Alaska.
"There were variations in that sense of local control across the north; in Alaska it was particularly higher, which was surprising."
Kruse also found people's well-being is strongly related to how they can balance subsistence activity such as hunting and fishing with wage-earning jobs.
"We found a strong relationship between levels of subsistence activity and overall satisfaction with life," he said. "You could imagine then that efforts to improve traditional education could pay off in the long run with satisfaction and less depression and less suicide."
The survey found that the Inupiat respondents on the north slope of Alaska had the highest sense of control over their affairs, using revenues from oil development to create jobs in the area.
By contrast, health, employment and other living conditions were much poorer in Chukotka, Russia, than in the rest of the Arctic. Respondents there reported very low satisfaction levels.
Kruse said the team hopes to complete the survey with the Saami peoples in parts of Scandinavia next year. In the meantime, the Arctic Council will use the current survey results to look at sustainable development in the North. Indigenous groups can also use the results to form policies.