Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.
When I came here this morning, I didn't know if the committee wanted me to bring something on paper to present my case.
My reservation, Jackhead Reserve, is a fishing community. The reason I came here is for identification purposes. We've been living on this lake we're sitting beside this morning for centuries. We've been getting our livelihood from this lake. I didn't come here to speak on behalf of the FFMC, the Freshwater Fish Marketing Corporation. I'm here to represent my community, my family, my ancestral...the connections we have to the fishing industry.
I wanted to say that much, but I guess I have to provide you with all the necessary information: who I am and who we are as Nishnawbe people. I want to read something to you. I don't know if the committee got a copy of some of my recommendations we are facing back in our community, but I want to read this document. Also, I guess the committee knows we're a federal responsibility. This came about the day the treaties were signed. This is why we're in this situation today. The way I express myself, I have to identify who I am and where I come from wherever I go.
I want to read this to you. It's a declaration of our first nations that we have to bring forward. Wherever we go, whatever we do, we're going to talk about water rights and everything like that.
This declaration went to England in 1985, and the House of Lords had a standing ovation in support of it. I want to read it to you here this morning. I don't want to be too long. I don't know how many minutes I have; I understand it's five minutes. It says:
We the Original Peoples of this Land know the Creator put us here.
The Creator gave us Laws that govern all our relationships to live in harmony with nature and mankind.
The Laws of the Creator defined our rights and responsibilities.
The Creator gave us spiritual beliefs, our languages, our culture, and a place on Mother Earth which provides us with all our needs.
We have maintained our freedom, our Languages, and our traditions from time immemorial.
We continue to exercise the rights and fulfill the responsibilities and obligations given to us by the Creator for the land upon which we were placed.
The Creator gave us the right to self-determination.
The rights and responsibilities given to us by the Creator cannot be altered or taken away by any other Nation.
We have to try to maintain and balance our communities, our lives, with some of the things in this document, which carries the duties and responsibilities of every first nation. At the same time, I have these five points that are very critical and crucial for our situation where I come from.
As I said, I don't want to put the blame on anything here today.
Also, I want to give respect to everybody sitting at the table here. At the same time, as I said, I'm not here to defend the Freshwater Fish Marketing Corporation, because it's a crown corporation.
In our small communities, we have lots of despair, lots of suicides. Young people are killing each other because they don't have anything to do. What we need and want in our communities is to be able to get on with life and to try to create something for our young people today. Those are the purposes we strive for today as community leaders and community fishermen.
The reason why I talk this way is that this is the way I live and this is the way I walk. I try to follow my culture every day, and I have to state what I have to say about my identity. But I want to thank you all for listening to me. I don't want to go overboard here.
Our community needs something like a good harbour where I come from, the Jackhead Reserve. That's the reason why I've been leading talks with our MLA and with our MP, in order to try to get this harbour that we need in our community, the Jackhead Reserve. In some of the places where they construct these government wharves, there's a lot of drug activity and lots of alcohol going through--places that I've seen around Lake Winnipeg. In some communities, when they have a government wharf there, they do not try to involve it with their FFMC fish plant. I know of a couple of places that don't have a concern about it, but where I come from, we definitely need a good, safe wharf that we can use for our future.
I recently got into a bigger quota, and as I speak, I don't have a place to have protection for my boat.
I want to say that much at this time. I don't want to offend anybody. If I do, I ask for your forgiveness.
I don't know if I should read these other five pages. They point out the problem we're having in developing the Jackhead harbour authority, number one. We're in the process of doing that because it will be a benefit for the future economic development of our community.
We live at the end of the road here, so we're all that's left at the bottom of the bag, I'll say. Where we live, we're not a very big community. We have about a hundred homes where I come from, but fishing is our main resource. We've always relied on the river for protection for our boats, but as you say, everything is getting to be environmentally watched today. It's very hard to be able to have a clean environment if you're going to be parking boats in the river.
As I said, our fishery goes back a hundred years, ever since the first contact began in documents and papers. We've always been involved in the fishery. My ancestors, my grandfathers, my forefathers were the ones who were involved in these negotiations when this fishery was being established. At the same time, that was their livelihood. I'm always very grateful for that today, so that I can be here today. In terms of the way they lived their lives, everything has changed and has come to be the way it is today.
Anyway, I wanted to say that much for now. I'll leave it at that.
