Saskatchewan’s Aboriginal population is the fastest growing and youngest segment of the provincial population.
New numbers from Statistics Canada for 2011 put the Aboriginal population in the province at just under 160,000, or 15.6 per cent of the total population.
Nationally, Aboriginal people account for just 4.3 per cent of the population.
The average age of Aboriginal people is also very young at 20-years-old – about half the national average.
The census shows there were 40,000 First Nations children under the age of 14 in Saskatchewan in 2011.
This represents almost 40 per cent of the First Nations population and 20 per cent of all children in Saskatchewan.
Less than half of all Aboriginal children were living with both parents compared to the national average, which was 76 per cent.