Mother Earth and household welfare functions of First Nations peoples of Canada

The subjective wellbeing of people living on reserves in two Canadian First Nations communities was measured, analysed and discussed. Key domains of wellbeing and respective contributing factors and linkages between contributing factors and domains were identified through discussions with elders and focus groups. Households’ data were collected through a structured questionnaire to estimate subjective wellbeing models and household welfare functions (HWF) of income, traditional diet and trapping income. The social, cultural and land use (SCLU) domain was found to be the most important contributor to wellbeing, and SCLU factors contributed to all other domains’ satisfactions. The HWF analysis indicated that as people’s income increases, people need more income to be satisfied; however, an improvement of quality of time spent on gathering or stronger social ties can reduce the amount of income for average income satisfaction. The phenomenon of preference drift is also observed in the HWF of traditional diet and trapping income.