Public Health Agency of Canada figures released this month show the HIV infection rate among natives is three times that of the overall population. Last year, aboriginals represented 9 percent of new HIV infections, though natives are only 3.3 percent of Canada's population.

Needle sharing was the infection route for 53 percent of new native HIV cases, compared with an intravenous drug use (IDU)-related infection rate of 14 percent for the general population. Women comprise 45.1 percent of native HIV cases, compared with one-fifth among non-natives, and aboriginals under age 30 were at greater risk than under-30 non-aboriginals.

Crystal methamphetamine has helped fuel IDU among native communities, said Kevin Barlow, executive director of the Canadian Aboriginal AIDS Network.

A recent B.C. Center for Excellence in HIV/AIDS study found hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection rates among native IDUs in Vancouver and Prince George at 57.1 percent and 62.4 percent, respectively. In Prince George, 7.9 percent of native IDUs had HIV, compared with Vancouver's 17 percent rate. HCV spreads more easily than HIV through IDU.

Experts speculated Prince George IDUs, who favored cocaine, morphine, and Dilaudid, are also at increased HIV risk since IDUs often inject them more frequently than heroin, the longer-lasting opiate favored in Vancouver. A 2003 study found about 25 percent of IDUs in Vancouver's downtown East Side were aboriginals, and their HIV incidence was twice that of other IDUs.

Many native leaders warn the situation in Prince George is also occurring in Kamloops, Kelowna, and Prince Rupert, and in the downtowns of Winnipeg, Edmonton, Calgary, and Regina. A 2004 Health Canada study of 794 IDUs in Toronto, Sudbury, Regina, and Victoria revealed 40 percent were aboriginals.

In British Columbia, many adult natives were traumatized by experiences in residential schools and foster care, eroding the family structure and causing pain, leading many to IDU, said Splats'in First Nation Chief Wayne Christian of Kelowna.

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