A First Nation For The 21st Century

A prosperous indigenous community near Vancouver has lots to teach Canada’s marginalized aboriginal groups

- Cristina Lindblad

The day Tsawwassen Mills opened last October in suburban Vancouver, shoppers lined up before dawn to get a first shot at Canada’s biggest new mall in almost a decade. That weekend, more than 200,000 came through the doors, spending C$150 ($120) on average. The wait to exit the parking lot stretched to four hours.

The crowds never went away: Foot traffic hovered at around half a million people a month through the summer, according to the developer, Ivanhoe Cambridge. The mall is just one manifestation of the economic boom under way in Tsawwassen First Nation, an aboriginal community about 20 miles from both downtown Vancouver and the U.S. border. Nearby, there’s a master-planned residential development where homes start at C$619,900, fruit of a partnership with the Aquilini family, one of Canada’s richest. A little farther down the road, the Tsawwassen are expanding a logistics center serving the country’s busiest commercial port.

It’s the kind of success story Prime Minister Justin Trudeau needs more of. As Canada marks its 150th birthday this year, the milestone has exposed stark disparities within its population of 35 million people. In a country that credits its prosperity to diversity, some of its most celebrated self-made billionaires are immigrants from India, Italy, and Taiwan. But members of Canada’s indigenous groups—who numbered 1.4 million in the 2011 census—lag on almost all socioeconomic measures: Their unemployment rate is double that of the broader population, and their median wage trails by a third. Only 10 percent of aboriginal Canadians earn the university degrees that are a fast track to well-paying jobs.