Aboriginals over-represented yet again

Do you know where your children are? For most people the answer isn't, "living with my own parents."

The numbers in aboriginal communities are pretty startling.

Esme Fuller-Thompson, an associate professor of social work at the University of Toronto, said 17 per cent of all caregiving grandparents are of First Nations origin. "This was easily more than five times the numbers you'd expect to find given the population," she said.

Today, however, Fuller-Thompson and other researchers are finding children are usually driven into their grandparents' homes when their parents succumb to substance abuse.

We're talking 1 in 5 kids here. Another sad reality that won't be resolved by confronting authority, or laying siege to any amount of land.

RELATED: Statistics Canada has another study...

Northern Canadians (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) are more than three times as likely to fall victim to violent crimes than the rest of the country, most often at the hands of people they know, a new report suggested Monday.

A previous Statscan report said that reports of spousal abuse was nearly double in the North, compared with the rest of Canada.

Northern residents, Statscan noted, tend to be younger on average than residents in the rest of Canada; they have higher proportions of lone-parent families and common-law families; they have higher rates of unemployment and they have higher proportions of Aboriginal residents, compared to the provinces.