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Aboriginal youth unprepared for city life: study

Report recommends steps to overcome ‘culture shock’

Aboriginal youth are facing a queue of challenges when moving from rural communities to the city, and reserves need to do more to prepare them, a study by the Vancouver Native Health Society (VNHS) has found.

The 26-page report, titled Success in the City: Examining Aboriginal Youth Moving from Rural to Urban Communities, got its information from literature reviews and discussions with aboriginal people in rural and urban communities throughout British Columbia. The report was released to the public through NationTalk, a national newswire covering stories about First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples.

Research for the study began when the VNHS noticed that aboriginal youth were having trouble adjusting to city life.

Cole Rheaume, director of sales for NationTalk in B.C., coordinated the study for VNHS. “It was undertaken by Vancouver Native Health because they had anecdotally understood… that there was youth that were finding themselves perhaps getting into trouble and having a difficult time in the transition,” he said.

Among several findings, the report states that factors such as high unemployment, isolation and lack of educational or other opportunities are driving youths from reserves and into cities. Other factors include a low standard of living and abuse and neglect within families, according to the report’s executive summary.

“These shortcomings leave youth unprepared for the demands of city life and predisposed to anti-social behaviour when they migrate,” the report reads.

The report identified culture shock as one of the biggest challenges that aboriginal youth experience when they move to the city.

Though the report has several recommendations for improvements to be made on reserves, it nevertheless says that those communities provide a safety net for youth with factors such as housing, family, food and a sense of identity.

The report reads that youth find themselves in a situation of “cultural dislocation, loneliness and poverty” when moving to the city and that some individuals are left “completely adrift.”

“Unable to integrate quickly, the individual feels isolated and disconnected,” the report says. “This interferes with normal socializing, and indeed many youth expressed difficultly integrating socially to their new environment.”

Consultations with youth found that their experiences in the city were closely tied to the amount of exposure they had to urban areas. The report notes that those who had little first-hand experience with the city had their views shaped by verbal accounts and story-telling mixed with media representations from television the Internet and print material.

“Many of these views were at odds with reality to such a degree that they caused serious problems for youth once they got to their destination,” the report says.

This is a situation that the Xaxli’p First Nation, located near Lillooet, has tried to avoid.

Bobby Watkinson, a band councillor in charge of the youth portfolio, told Pique that the band organizes summer programs that send youth on trips into Vancouver and Kamloops.

“When I was a kid I rarely went to the city,” he said. “But the kids these days, in the youth programs, they go on trips, go to the city, they get to go out there a lot more than we ever did.

“They take them on trips all the time, keeps the kids busy all summer.”

Watkinson said the effect of those trips is that youth from the Xaxli’p band are becoming “a lot more aware” of the city.

He added that there aren’t enough youth moving from the Xaxli’p reserve to the cities, but he said that a lack of job opportunities near the community is driving more youth to urban areas than a decade ago.

“Culture shock… if you asked me 10 years ago, it would have been a major factor,” he said. “It’s not actually as much of a shock (today) because a lot more youth are getting to the city these days than they ever did before.

“There’s a little more awareness that they have to stay in school if they want to get a decent job these days. It’s not like it used to be, where you could just go find a job anywhere.”

Most youth in the study said they always intended to move to the city, citing factors such as dysfunctional families and difficult living conditions in reserve communities. The report says that youth see moving to the city as the “only way of escaping.”

The report also cites “nepotism” in the governance system on First Nation communities as a reason for leaving reserves. It says that those who have family members in powerful positions can benefit when economic resources are distributed, but families outside of the governance circle can suffer.

The study provides a series of recommendations to help aboriginal youth adjust more smoothly to city life. Those recommendations include programs to build skills in areas such as bill payment, budgeting, personal hygiene and banking, as well as courses on public speaking to overcome shyness.

It also recommends that emergency shelter be made available with “low or no” barriers to youth in their early adaptation phases.

The study concludes saying that relocation is a “wise choice at the level of personal survival,” but that preparation and guidance are crucial for the transition.