This area of findings deals with the primary clients of the rural and northern Manitoba EC and produced some depressing information. While I was researching this project, an article appeared in the Globe and Mail where notable critic John Ibbitson (2006) had this to say, “If you’re an Indian in your 20s living on a reserve, you need to leave right now”
(¶ 2). Ibbitson further stated, “We have utterly failed to rescue the latest generation of on-reserve native Canadians”
(¶ 3). The life conditions chart for the Aboriginal job seeker in chapter two (see Table 3) has been modified for this section to present the research findings.
The Aboriginal job seeker on reserves comes from communities that have some of the lowest quality of life indicators in North America. The very people who need the most resources have the least resources available to them. Participant B talked about the most challenging clients: “There’s so many people out there who don’t have anything, you know. They can’t go to school because they don’t have the money.… They don’t qualify for any of these programs.”
Aboriginal job seekers in rural and northern Manitoba typically face systemic and attitudinal barriers to achieving job success. Participant B talked about life skills required to achieve success, “Helping them to recognize what’s stopping them from succeeding is a challenge.… People are scared to talk.”
Participant A said, “He didn’t want to go alone … people don’t like to be singled out.”
Participant F talked about the large number of unemployed youth and new programming directions: “A lot of awareness programs for the drug problem in the communities … and the gangs are moving in.”
Participant F passionately talked about the status of many northern Aboriginals who get into trouble: “We’re an industry for the mainstream, for the jails, for the justice system, for the social system. We’re a very lucrative industry.… Who is going to stop that status quo?”