 Phil Fontaine hailed a compensation package for abused aborigines |
The venue for the two-day meeting is in the western city of Kelowna.
It is expected to result in a multi-billion dollar package to fight poverty and disease on native reserves.
On Wednesday, Canada offered to pay more than C$2bn (US$1.7bn, £1bn) to indigenous people who were abused at government-funded residential schools.
The First Ministers' Meeting on Aboriginal Issues, in British Columbia, was called by Prime Minister Paul Martin.
Premiers of Canada's 13 provinces and territories and leaders of the indigenous peoples - known as the First Nations - are attending the meeting.
Canada's aborigines make up less than 2% of the population.
Correspondents say they face problems such as housing shortages, and lower life expectancy and school graduation rates than the non-aboriginal population.
'Embarrassment'
The federal government is expected to announce on Friday that it will commit as much as C$4bn (US$3.4bn) over the next five years to improve living conditions on native reserves, according to AP news agency.
The package will be spent on housing, health care, education and economic development.
"Canada has a Third World in its front yard and back alleys," said Phil Fontaine, chief of the Assembly of First Nations, earlier this week.
"That is a national tragedy and an international embarrassment."
School abuse
The summit in Kelowna is also expected to settle outstanding claims of child abuse.
Mr Fontaine hailed the proposal announced on Wednesday to compensate indigenous people who were abused at government-funded residential schools. The draft package must still be agreed by the courts.
Some 80,000 people who attended these schools over decades are eligible.
About 15,000 of them have begun legal claims against the government and Church, which ran the schools - to be dropped if they accept the deal.
The schools were set up in sparsely populated areas in an attempt to assimilate Canada's indigenous peoples into mainstream society.
Attendance was mandatory and children were forcibly removed from their families and forbidden from speaking their language.
