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Aboriginal People in Manitoba 2000 Chapter 2 : Health

The leading causes of mortality of First Nations people nationally in 1991-93 were injury and poisoning (154 per 100,000 annually) and circulatory diseases (135), followed by cancer (76) and respiratory disease (43). Heart disease and cancer, in particular, are associated with increasing age. However, for First Nations people from one to 45 years of age, injury and poisoning are by far the main causes of death. The injury and poisoning death rate for First Nations is 3.8 times the national rate, and there has been little change in this ratio since the mid-1980s.

The medical category “Injury and Poisoning” essentially includes all causes of death besides illness. Nationally, it accounted for an estimated 55% of 25,795 “Potential Years of Life Lost” (PYLL)³ among First Nations people in 1993. First Nations overall injury/poisoning rates are generally higher the farther west one goes; that is, they are proportionately higher in Ontario than Quebec, in Manitoba than Ontario, in Saskatchewan than Manitoba, in Alberta than Saskatchewan, and in British Columbia than Alberta.

Motor vehicle accidents and suicides are the main causes of death by injury and poisoning in Manitoba, as in all provinces. Causes of death also included in this category are: accidental poisoning and overdoses, drowning, fire, homicide, and “other” (e.g., suffocation, exposure, falls, firearms, industrial accidents and aircraft crashes).

Omitting for analytical purposes unclassified “other” deaths, Manitoba First Nations experience relatively fewer motor vehicle and suicide deaths than many Health Canada regions, though these are still the predominant causes of death. Generally, motor vehicle deaths predominate west of Manitoba, suicides east of Manitoba, and accidental poisoning/overdose deaths occur in significant frequency only in Alberta, B.C. and the Territories.

In Manitoba the First Nations rate of death by homicide in 1989-93 was twice the national rate and much higher than in any other region, with Saskatchewan a distant second. The Manitoba rate of death by drowning was also high, second only to Ontario. Geography can explain the pattern of drowning deaths, but the First Nations homicide rate in Manitoba is very striking and not easily explained.

In a 1998 study done by the Winnipeg Free Press of 158 homicides committed in Manitoba from 1992 to 1996, fully 60% of the victims were found to be Aboriginal, including 73% of victims in rural Manitoba. The homicide risk for Aboriginal Manitobans was calculated to be 30 times that of the population as a whole.

Nationally, Status Indian deaths due to injury and poisonings are more than twice as common among men as among women (1,367 compared to 579 in 1991 - 93). Of these deaths, suicides claimed 26% of men compared to 21% of women, giving men a rate of suicide three times that of women. Men were far more likely to die of each and all injury/poisoning causes, except accidental poisoning/overdoses, for which male/female rates were about equal.

However, Health Canada reports an overall decrease in First Nations injury and poisoning rates, “accounting for more than 60% of all deaths averted in 1989-1993 when compared to 1989 - 1993 rates. Not coincidentally, the 25-44 year old population is the group in which the largest number of deaths were averted. Suicide and overdoses are the only causes of injury and poisoning deaths not showing substantial improvements.”⁴