Government policy and the spatial redistribution of Canada’s Aboriginal peoples

Canada’s Aboriginal population comprises North American Indians, Métis and Inuit who collectively constitute a small (3.9 per cent), but growing share of the country’s total population. This chapter opens with a brief overview of the historical basis of White settler contact with each of these groups as essential context for an analysis and explanation of contemporary patterns of Aboriginal interaction and mobility following Canada’s demographic transition from a rural to an urban post-industrial society. Distributional patterns and other specifics of Aboriginal demography from the most recent Canadian census are examined as a basis for understanding changing Aboriginal mobility patterns and their consequences over the past century.