A million aboriginals

Canada's aboriginal population tops million mark:  StatsCanCanada's aboriginal population surged past the million mark for the first time on a Canadian census, a spike of 45 per cent from a decade earlier.

Statistics Canada, which released new data Tuesday from the 2006 census on Canada's aboriginal population, counted 1,172,790 Indian, Métis and Inuit people—3.8 per cent of Canada's total population.

This was an increase from 3.3 per cent in 2001 and 2.8 per cent in 1996, with the aboriginal population growing six times faster than the non-aboriginal population. Fewer than 800,000 people called themselves aboriginal in the 1996 census.

First Nations people accounted for the majority of aboriginal people (60 per cent) followed by Métis (33 per cent) and Inuit (four per cent).