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This study described perceptions of bullying as a school characteristic and associations with school, academic, and health characteristics among a representative sample of First Nations high school students living off reserve in Canada using data from the 2012 Aboriginal Peoples Survey. Almost 4 in 10 of First Nations youth living off reserve perceived bullying as a problem at their schools. A perceived climate of bullying co-occurred with other negative school climate characteristics such as racism, violence, and the presence of alcohol and drugs. First Nations youth living off reserve who perceived bullying as a problem at school reported higher psychological distress and a higher prevalence of suicidal ideation, even after controlling for the effects of youth sex, age, and household income. These findings highlight the need to focus on school characteristics as perceived by youth to improve school climate and youth health.

The objective of this study was to examine factors associated with school outcomes among elementary school-aged Inuit children in Inuit Nunangat through a socio-ecological framework. The associations among children’s school outcomes and various individual, family, and school factors were examined using the 2012 Aboriginal Peoples Survey. Logistic regression analyses suggest that an Inuk child who is healthy and not hungry, whose parents obtained a post-secondary education, who is attending a school with a climate conducive to learning and at which parents are given opportunities to be involved, and who is exposed daily to the Inuit language has better odds of succeeding at school.

First Nations children in Canada often experience poorer housing conditions than other Canadian children. This study used the 2006 Aboriginal Children’s Survey to examine the relationship between housing and physical and mental health for First Nations preschool-aged children living off-reserve. This study provides evidence that the physical, spatial, and psychological aspects of housing in which young off-reserve First Nations children live are associated with their physical and mental health, even after controlling for family socioeconomic factors, area of residence, and child’s age and sex (analyzed with regression models). In particular, homeownership, parental satisfaction with housing, and number of moves per year were all associated with multiple physical and mental health outcomes. Future research is needed to further investigate the mechanisms at play.

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.