Sorry, for female inmates, they make up more than 1/3.

Somewhere there's some inumeracy afoot.

"MORE than one third" could mean anything from 33.3 per cent to 100 per cent. 

I suspect that different forms of custody may have confused the reporter, and there's no mention of youth rates… and perhaps some provincial rates are mentioned in the report. And there are different measures that are used by StasCan: admissions and "prison days". Admissions are "new" inmates; "prison days" includes those sentenced in the past. And there are "admissions to correctional services", which include custody AND community supervision admissions. As well, in my experience (as an editor and subeditor, many journalists are a bit innumerate.

But they are paid to sort these things out.

StatsCan ( http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/85-002-x/2010003/article/11353-eng.htm#a1) says:

In 2008/2009, Aboriginal people accounted for 27% of admissions to provincial and territorial sentenced custody, 18% of admissions to federal custody and 21% of admissions to remand. According to the 2006 Census, the Aboriginal representation in the Canadian adult population was 3%.

Based on the 11 jurisdictions that have reported consistently over time, the representation of Aboriginal people among sentenced custody admissions has increased by two percentage points since 2004/2005.

....

In 2008/2009, Aboriginal women represented 28% of all women remanded and 37% of women admitted to sentenced custody. In comparison, Aboriginal men represented 20% of remanded men and 25% of men admitted to sentenced custody.12

Since 2004/2005, the representation of Aboriginal women among female admissions to sentenced custody has increased by 6 percentage points, while the representation among remand admissions has increased by 2 percentage points. In contrast, there has been a smaller increase for male Aboriginal admissions. From 2004/2005, the representation of Aboriginal men admitted to sentenced custody increased 2 percentage points and the representation of remanded Aboriginal men increased 1 percentage point.

....

In 2008/2009, Aboriginal adults represented 18% of probation admissions and 20% of admissions to conditional sentence compared to 25% of admissions to provincial and territorial sentenced custody and 21% of remand admissions.

Looks like I should have copied and pasted the article.  Rather than correct ALL the mistakes (there are 2 corrections already), sections were just rewritten.

Thanks Mike!

As for the 'more than 1/3' I suspect it came from this in the report:

Aboriginal women accounted for over 31.9% of all federally incarcerated women,^[9] representing an increase of 85.7% over the last decade.^[10]

I assume it doesn't mean more than 32% (although I didn't go to the cited source to check), so the more than 1/3 would also be wrong.

Interesting… 31.9 per cent is 1.4 LESS that a third: so it's presumably gone up by more than 1.4 per cent since 2008-9.

The real story, of course, is the recial/cultural disparity… and that's a measure of social injustice for which we're all responsible.