| By :
Terry S Vostor
No doubt about it. Canadian Native and First Nations peoples have hardships ongoing - be they Inuit, Metis or any of the "First Peoples" of the Canadian country How do aboriginal elders be identified and differentiated from other elderly individuals? Long standing authority in the field Mr. S. Wilson has reported after long and extensive study and studies that there is no doubt about the major as well as exceptional role that village, community and settlement patriarch and veterans continue to imbue. An aboriginal elder is one who has knowledge in the cultures and traditions of his people and is willing to share that knowledge by passing it on to younger generations through the teaching and modelling of correct behaviour. "Seniors are well-regarded in several aboriginal communal cultures for their knowledge and experiences, and the essential peeve that they place in the vigor and well being of their families , communities and nations ", says a Statistics Canada Government Report titled " A Portrait of Seniors in Canada". No doubt about it - the wisdom of the ages lies in the faces of these "senior citizens" , the stalwarts of their peoples. They are not only tagged as sources of knowledge but as well as carriers of culture. They convey a spiritual continuity of the past, present and future. Elders with the great expertise and experiences have the golden gift of making traditional ways a solid component of today here and now, in an everyday fashion and manner. It all began with an undertaking , that strove onwards , initiated firstly with officialdom counting the general population , for its records, in the year of two thousand and one. An extensive official record keeping project was seriously undertaken , finally. In the completed and issued document one whole thick part dealt especially with these issues of Aboriginal and "First Nations Elders", their impact and effects in being a stalwart in maintaining important community and indeed wholesale cultural values. This applied not only the Native American Indians themselves , but also to the Inuit and Metis proud peoples. Most young "First Nations" peoples have forsaken their treasured languages of their origin. Elders maintain a watershed of these spoken - and even written forms of communication. English is prevalent . Its is everywhere - on the radio, in the marketplace, on satellite tv and movies. Its even utilized in the professional wrestling matches on television. Yet to lose your race's or communities language is to lose expression of what is important to you, and in essence to lose your very life. Canadian Aboriginals make up only one percent of the total Canadian Aboriginal population. Nonetheless as life expectancy rates advance with improvements in healthcare and health infrastructure development as well as training these numbers are likely to rise while falling birth rates will tend to concentrate the prevailing group of Aboriginal Seniors as a percentage among the Canadian "First Nations". In total there are approximately 40,000 Aboriginal Seniors in Canada. Most of them live in the province of Ontario, followed by British Columbia, and Manitoba. Headwind among population density centers are the two first western Canadian prairie provinces. "Aboriginal seniors encompass a far greater percentage of the total senior population in the North of Canada in the Northwest Territories and the Yukon." But Aboriginal Seniors face lower life expectancies rates than non-Aboriginal seniors with aboriginal women outliving aboriginal men, Even though low in percentages and total numbers, Canadian Aboriginal seniors will increase in both numbers and percentages over the coming years as life expectancy improves. This group has and will continue to expert an ever increasing vital role in the cultural conservation of Aboriginal culture in Canada.
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