Community Well-Being among the Registered Indian and non-Aboriginal populations in Winnipeg: Trends over time and spatial analysis

The CWB Index has been developed to investigate well-being at the community level using census subdivisions to define the different types of communities. Because the basis for analysis is the entire population of a community, the presence of non-Aboriginal populations living in First Nations or Inuit communities, or of Aboriginal people living in “other” (non- Aboriginal) communities, has not yet been considered. Therefore, to date, the differences in well-being between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal residents of the same areas have not been investigated at the community level. In addition, few (if any) CSDs identified as First Nations or Inuit are located in urban areas. There is a need to understand better the well-being of this segment of Canada’s population (Newhouse and Peters 2003). Thus the purpose of the present study was to apply the CWB Index to describe the socioeconomic well-being of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal residents of the same urban centers. For this purpose, we use the city of Winnipeg in Manitoba, Canada as a “case study” because of its large Aboriginal population.