Business in the Classroom

In Canada, only 40 per cent of on-reserve and 57 per cent of off-reserve aboriginal students will graduate from high school. The Martin Initiative says in its public brochure that it has found that 70 per cent of the students who take these courses finish them, and most of these students go on to graduate.

It isn’t just the aboriginal community that will benefit from programs like AYEP working to raise graduation rates and lead aboriginal students towards post-secondary education. Labour force studies have shown for several years that encouraging aboriginal students could have positive effects on the Canadian economy as a whole.

Free to Learn, a study published in 2010 by the Macdonald-Laurier Institute,identifies aboriginal youth as an economic asset in the face of a coming wave of retiring baby boomers. According to Statistics Canada, 28 per cent of Canada’s First Nations, Metis, and Inuit population are 14 years old or younger, compared to 19 per cent in the rest of the population. These children have the potential to be valuable resources.

“Canada’s population is growing slowly and greying, while the Aboriginal population is growing rapidly and is much younger,” the study says. It adds later, “Whatever way one looks at it, the data say the same thing: as the Canadian labour force remains stable or stagnant while the economy is growing, the potential labour pool of Aboriginals is growing rapidly. The labour force implications are already here.”

A 2011 study by the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business entitled Promise and Prosperity: The Aboriginal Business Survey says that between 2001 and 2006, the number of self-employed aboriginal people rose by 38 per cent – five times the increase recorded in self-employed non-aboriginal people. Despite this growth, the total proportion of aboriginal business owners remains at about half that of the rest of the population.

One of the major roadblocks to aboriginal entrepreneurship, particularly among young people, is a lack of access to capital. The Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business points out that roughly half of aboriginal business owners don’t borrow funds to start their businesses.

“Aboriginal small business owners consider access to financing, and access to equity or capital to be obstacles to their growth plans,” says the report.

The Council speculates in a report from 2006 on the same subject that lack of capital access may be a “contributing factor for the self-employment gap” between aboriginal business owners and non-aboriginal business owners

Pratt says there is a lot of potential for aboriginal business people to help their communities. Many aboriginal people, he says, are naturally creative and entrepreneurial.

“It’s a matter of finding the right kind of business, understanding how to do it and getting a lot of capital. Capital is really difficult to come by for anybody. And the more aboriginal entrepreneurs there are, the more capital is going to be available for other aboriginal entrepreneurs,” he says.

“That’s the whole idea, to keep this whole process of entrepreneurial spirit growing and developing. That’ll help increase an economy of aboriginal communities “

The success of these business-owners can have a profound effect on everyone around them.

“Aboriginal entrepreneurs are helping to improve the negative socio-economic conditions experienced in so many aboriginal communities and families through unemployment,” says the 2006report by the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business.

And not only do aboriginal entrepreneurs create new capital and job opportunities, seeing members of their own community as successful business people can be deeply inspirational to youth.

“It’s also very good to see aboriginal people succeeding in contemporary society; contributing to Canadian society as well as standing strong with traditional values.