Many First Nations people lived in Ontario and the western provinces, but they made up most of the total population of the Northwest Territories, Yukon, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan. Winnipeg has the largest indigenous population of any major city in Canada, according to the latest census data. More than 52,000 people of mixed race, First Nations or Inuit descent live in this rainy city on the west coast, and it's hard to ignore the great impact and presence of indigenous culture in the area. In June, the leaders of the city of Vancouver, with 600,000 inhabitants, approved a declaration stating that “it was founded in the traditional First Nations territories of Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh and that these territories were never ceded by treaty, war or surrender.” British Columbia has more first nations than any other province, but, nevertheless, almost none of the provinces are covered by historic land-sharing treaties with the government.
While First Nations inhabitants represented 2.8 percent of the total population of Canada, they represented 10.7 percent of the population in Saskatchewan and 10.5 percent in Manitoba, and nearly a third of the population in the Northwest Territories (32,. But, in fact, most indigenous peoples live in Canadian cities and, according to the latest census, native populations that live outside reservations, mixed-race people and Inuit are the fastest growing populations in the entire country. Mixed-race and Inuit people rank second among the largest population in the First Nations, another city in Alberta, Edmonton, the capital of the province. More people with First Nations status (25,970 in total) live in Winnipeg than in any other Canadian city.
The opening of the museum was boycotted by the award-winning electronic band A Tribe Called Red and criticisms from Buffy Sainte-Marie, not to mention that a nearby First Nation declared that its poor living conditions were a “Canadian Museum of Human Rights Violations”.
