Análisis descriptivo de la información relativa a las variables de estudio:

In many respects, an increasing segment of urban Aboriginal populations appears to be moving, or becoming positioned for entry, into positions associated with new middle classes. Labour market changes, educational advancement, and emerging business and employment opportunities have increased the numbers and proportions of individuals who are engaged or aspiring to careers in professional and managerial work. Entrepreneurial work is also producing new options for self-sufficiency and managerial and professional expertise. These changes are further fuelled by the expansion of populations, markets, and service needs that contribute to employment options for the growing numbers of urban Aboriginal people who have advanced qualifications, training, and skills. Aboriginal people are gradually

becoming more integrated into key professional and administrative roles in diverse sectors. The concentration of highly qualified and experienced Aboriginal people in urban centres has opened doors to develop new networks, contacts, and spheres of influence that are likely to maintain themselves and foster opportunities for further growth and development in these regards. The climate is gradually changing to acknowledge the positive contributions these emergent capacities can offer to promote the interests of Aboriginal people and enhance their ties with organizations that previously have had limited engagement with the Aboriginal population. Commenting on the recent appointment by the Saskatoon Chamber of Commerce of its first Aboriginal president, newspaper columnist Doug Cuthand observes: “We now have second- and third-generation urban Indians who see a place for themselves in society that their parents couldn’t see. Traditionally, our people have migrated to the cities and remained on the fringes. The only community involvement for most would revolve around the school or minor sports, mainly activities that involved their children. Today’s urban aboriginal people are an important part of the social and economic fabric.”17

These developments, of course, do not in themselves signify the creation of a distinct urban Aboriginal new middle class. Some consciousness of common interests and concerns is evident in business and professional associations, formal and informal lobby groups, and other networks that provide mutual support, voice, and options to develop professional and business connections. The establishment of professional associations, and related publications and journals like the Canadian Native Law Bulletin, Aboriginal Nurse,and Native Social Work Journal, represent efforts to foster a collective identity and body of knowledge that arise around the concerns of Aboriginal people in specific occupational roles. Many of these linkages are reflected further in lifestyle choices and consumption patterns that contribute to the cultivation of common social, economic, or political orientations. Further implications that arise from these trends could be explored by considering the extent to which class dynamics are related with important factors, such as spatial arrangements constituted by the location of residential and business establishments, the presence of reserves and treaty lands within urban centres, tax policies, and community infrastructures.

There remain numerous contradictions and dimensions associated with Aboriginal people’s class locations, particularly in the intermediate positions explored here. Professional, managerial, and entrepreneurial work tends to be highly individualistic and fragmentary, often producing isolation or

Prospects for a New Middle Class Among Urban Aboriginal People

tensions to balance personal, family, cultural, and community obligations with career demands. Aboriginal people in these positions frequently strive to maintain a powerful sense of commitment to indigenous communities. The privileged positions that they occupy, relative to many of their urban counterparts, can also produce pressures to reconcile personal success with concerns for social justice and effective action to ensure that Aboriginal people as a whole can gain meaningful opportunities within Canadian society. At the same time, even the successes that they have accomplished can be incomplete or precarious, particularly in the face of continuing racial discrimination and related concerns. Recent analysis of housing data in Toronto, for example, shows that only 53 percent of Aboriginal people in professional and managerial positions, compared with 81 percent of white managers and professionals, were homeowners.18 _{Practices that} operate as barriers to promotion and career advancement for highly placed, as well as lower level, workers continue to be embedded within many occupational cultures, institutional procedures, and life circumstances. For Aboriginal as well as non-Aboriginal people, the precarious nature of middle-class status is reinforced by evidence pointing to the high degree of entrepreneurial failure, the reality that most professional and managerial workers have limited discretion as paid employees subordinated within larger organizations or decision-making hierarchies, and the limited cohesion among persons in intermediate class positions.

The question as to how effective social and economic advancement can be accomplished for more than limited segments of the population remains a powerful consideration for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal populations alike. As the urban environment produces growing numbers of success stories as well as tales of despair, it is critical to acknowledge not only the diversity of characteristics and conditions among the Aboriginal population, but also the mechanisms that produce differentiation. Strategic institutional initiatives and policy interventions can be beneficial for individual and community capacity-building when they are employed to guide life transitions from educational and occupational aspirations to economic and social successes. Integration of programs and services in concert with a clear understanding of community needs and strengths is particularly important, as demonstrated by numerous initiatives that have produced positive results, including community schooling and university access programs, professional development and leadership training mentorship, and economic development plans that combine training with meaningful job creation. Further consideration is required to ensure that Aboriginal people have access to sufficient opportunities to employ their credentials and capacities in relevant employment and institutional situations.

Increasing numbers of educated and skilled Aboriginal people are making inroads into key labour market and decision-making positions, their profile enhanced by prominent professional, political, and business leaders. The more difficult transformation entails the creation of environments that will enable considerably larger proportions of the population to have similar options and advantages.

Notes

1 The term Aboriginal people refers in this paper to all indigenous groups, including First Nations, Métis, Inuit, or any other category of First Peoples in Canada based on ancestry and/or identity. Data are drawn from primary and secondary sources collected by Statistics Canada. Unless otherwise specified, data with regard to Aboriginal refers to those persons who reported identifying on the 1996 Census with at least one Aboriginal group and/or who reported being a Treaty Indian or Registered Indian as defined by the

Indian Actand/or who reported they were members of an Indian band or First Nation.

2 Fukuyama, F. (1992) The End of History and the Last Man, New York: The Free Press; Bell, D. (1973) The Coming of Post-Industrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting, New York: Basic Books, present influential accounts that herald the transcendence of conventional class and ideological divisions by fundamentally new or less clearly defined characteristics. By contrast, the work of E.O. Wright, see, for example,Classes (London: Verso, 1987), and Western, M. and E.O. Wright (1994) “The Permeability of Class Boundaries to Intergenerational Mobility Among Men in the United States, Canada, Norway and Sweden,”American Sociological Review, 59 (August); 606-629, offers perhaps the most widely used applications of class relations in late capitalism. 3 Daniels, D. (1987) “Dreams and Realities of Dene Government,”The Canadian Journal

of Native Studies, 7(1): 95-110; Haddad, T. and M. Spivey (1992) “All or Nothing:

Modernization, Dependency and Wage Labour on a Reserve in Canada,”The Canadian

Journal of Native Studies, 12(2): 203-228; Brown, R. (1996) “The Exploitation of the Oil

and Gas Frontier: Its Impact on Lubicon Lake Cree Women,” in Women of the First

Nations: Power, Wisdom, and Strength, C. Miller and P. Chuchryk, (eds.), Winnipeg: The

University of Manitoba Press, pp. 151-165; Elias, P.D. (1990) “Wage Labour, Aboriginal Rights and the Cree of the Churchill River Basin, Saskatchewan,”Native Studies Review, 6(2), pp. 43-64; Satzewich, V. and T. Wotherspoon (2000) First Nations: Race, Class, and

Gender Relations, Regina: Canadian Plains Research Center.

4 Albers, Patricia C. (1996) “From Legend to Land to Labour: Changing Perspectives on North American Work,” in Native Americans and Wage Labour: Ethnohistorical

Perspectives, Alice Littlefield and Martha C. Knack, (eds.), Norman, OK: University of

Oklahoma Press, 1996, p. 264.

5 RCAP (Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples) (1996) Report of the Royal

Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, Volume 2:Restructuring the Relationship, Ottawa:

Minister of Supply and Services Canada, pp. 814-815 and Volume 4:Perspectives and

Realities, Ottawa: Minister of Supply and Services Canada, pp. 520ff.; La Prairie, C.

(1995) Seen But Not Heard: Aboriginal People in the City, Ottawa: Minister of Justice Canada; Hull, J. (2000) “Aboriginal Post-Secondary Education and Labour Market Outcomes, Canada, 1996,” Report prepared for Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, Winnipeg, October, pp. 77-79; INAC (Indian and Northern Affairs Canada) (2001)

Aboriginal Labour Force Characteristics from the 1996 Census, Ottawa: Minister of Public

Prospects for a New Middle Class Among Urban Aboriginal People

6 Wright, E.O. (1997) Class Counts: Comparative Studies in Class Analysis, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Livingstone, D.W. (1999) The Education-Jobs Gap:

Underemployment or Economic Democracy, Toronto: Garamond Press, pp. 154-159;

Nakhaie M.R. and J. Curtis (1998) “Effects of Class Positions of Parents on Educational Attainment of Daughters and Sons,”Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology, 35(4) (November): 489-491.

7 See, e.g., Wolfson, M.C. (1997) Divergent Inequalities – Theory and Empirical Results, Ottawa: Statistics Canada, Analytical Studies Branch Research Paper Series, No. 66 revised, Cat. no. 11-F0019MPE No. 66.

8 The work of P. Bourdieu has drawn attention to the importance of class factors in strategic positioning for socially valued positions, especially among the new middle classes. See Bourdieu, P. (1984) Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; Crompton, R. (1998) Class and

Stratification: An Introduction to Current Debates, second edition, Cambridge, UK:

Polity Press.

9 See, e.g., Bernier, R. (1997) The Dimensions of Wage Inequality among Aboriginal People, Ottawa: Statistics Canada Analytical Studies Branch Research Series Paper No. 109, December, p. 8.

10 Industry Canada (1998) Aboriginal Entrepreneurs in Canada: Progress and Prospects, Ottawa: Industry Canada, pp. 3, 10-12; see also Chiste, K.B. (ed.) (1996) Aboriginal

Small Business and Entrepreneurship in Canada, North York, ON: Captus Press.

11 Statistics Canada (1989) Dimensions: Profile of Ethnic Groups, 1986 Census, Ottawa: Minister of Supply and Services Canada, Cat. no. 93-154; Statistics Canada (2000)

Dimensions: Portrait of Aboriginal Population in Canada, 1996 Census, Ottawa: Minister

of Public Works and Government Services Canada, Cat. no. 94F0009XDB96001. 12 CCSD (Canadian Council on Social Development) (2000) Unequal Access: A Canadian

Profile of Racial Differences in Education, Employment and Income, Ottawa: A Report

Prepared for the Canadian Race Relations Council, pp. 20-21; Hull, “Aboriginal Post-Secondary Education,” p. 4; Satzewich, V. and T. Wotherspoon (2000) First Nations:

Race, Class, and Gender Relations, Regina: Canadian Plains Research Center, pp. 68-69.

13 See Schissel, B. and T. Wotherspoon (2002) The Legacy of School for Aboriginal People:

Education, Oppression, and Emancipation, Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2002;

chapters assembled in Castellano, M.B., L. Davis, and L. Lahache (2000) Aboriginal

Education: Fulfilling the Promise, Vancouver: UBC Press.

14 CCSD,Unequal Access, pp. 16-17.

15 Hull, “Aboriginal Post-Secondary Education,” pp. 34-37; Statistics Canada, 2000, pp. 9-12; CCSD, ibid., pp. 18-22.

16 Schissel and Wotherspoon,The Legacy of School.

17 Cuthand, D. (2002) “Natives Taking Increasing Leadership in City,” Saskatoon

Star-Phoenix, May 10, p. A15.

18 Darder, J.T. and S.M. Kamel (2001) “Difference in Homeownership Rates Between Aboriginal People and White Canadians in the Toronto Census Metropolitan Area: Does Race Matter?”Native Studies Review, 14(1): 64.