Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin this week announced the Canadian government would allocate CAN $700 million (US $540 million) over five years for an aboriginal health fund to increase the number of health practitioners serving Native communities and to promote disease prevention. Martin was addressing Canada's First Ministers Meeting on Health, which met from September 13 through September 15.

An important forum entitled “Mapping for Indigenous Advocacy and Empowerment” is to be held in Vancouver, Canada from March 11-14. The International Forum on Indigenous Mapping is aimed primarily at indigenous leaders, elders, communityrepresentatives, and technicians who produce maps to secure the control, use, and protection of their land and resources, and to maintain centuries-old cultural knowledge.

Programs offered through Whitehorse General Hospital have forged new frontiers in culturally-relative healthcare. The hospital is home to a First Nations Health Program that provides a holistic and traditional approach to medicine, and strives to improve the health of it First Nations patrons.

Native leaders throughout the country have begun to voice concern over Health Canada’s proposed policy changes. Since 1900, Canadians descending from the aboriginal signers of Treaty Eight have received free healthcare from the federal government. Beginning in September, Health Canada’s new policy will require them to sign a consent form prior to receiving care. Natives fear that the government might force them into paying for services by making them sign the forms. Canadian officials are now reconsidering the form’s specifics.

The following are more excerpts from statements made during Week Two of the second session of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.

ON EDUCATION

Jiten Yumnam, Centre for Organization Research and Education, Manipur, India:

The Northern Contaminants Program, funded for 10 years by the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development (DIAND), will shortly lose funding, despite having recently made striking and disturbing discoveries. The levels of mercury and PCB found in arctic marine mammals are quite high, and the research program recently discovered “subtle” neurological effects on the babies of mothers who eat a traditional diet of “country food” - marine mammals, fish, and other subsistence foods.

Federal money for health care in Canada has always been provided to territories and provinces on a per capita basis. Yet providing an equivalent amount of money per person in every region of Canada makes arctic health care suffer. Costs in the arctic are dramatically higher than they are in the south and in urban areas, leading to what some have called a “Third World” health care situation. Recently, a proposal to reconsider the per capita strategy has been approved by the various Premiers of Canada. It is not known yet whether Prime Minister Jean Chrétien will accept the proposal.