Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I'm not sure whether the translation was correct. Are you talking about whether the mining companies seeking consent within the communities are doing the right thing? I think.... Could you clarify?

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I think this is what developers and mining companies do. They know there is economic depression in a lot of the communities, whether they're remote or not—like my community. They manipulate indigenous people using the economic and job arguments. For indigenous people from that co

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  It sounds like a really complex question. I don't know if I can answer, but I will do my best.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I live in a small community in which the population has expanded. It's an hour north of Montreal, and we get a lot of tourists who don't even know we exist here. One of the things I think is a really tiny thing to do with regard to land back and parks is to create names and str

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thank you.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  When I say “elders”, I'm not talking about people who are simply old. I am talking about those who have traditional knowledge and who have that wisdom of saying.... I hear stories from, say, an elder that go, “When I was a child, this is what we used to pick to help a stomach ach

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Not at all, sir.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  No, I think what you need to understand is that, when the government says we're going to do consultation, if nobody shows up, they consider that consultation. What resource developers have done in the past is call the band office and ask for the grand chief, the “Grand Poobah”, a

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yes, that is a really excellent question too, and it's something I've been asked often. Let's get rid of the Indian Act and then treat us as nations. Treat us as we should be treated, having access to our traditional homelands, which are thousands of square miles for some and mi

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  The band councils..... I just want to clarify. Just let me finish this for a second. The band council was created by the Government of Canada to usurp the traditional forms of leadership. This is who the government chooses all the time, and they say to us, as traditional people

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Is that what's the most important thing? If you take a look at how informed they are, how informed are they? Is there any coercion that is going on? Free, prior and informed consent addresses those, and I know—because I live in communities and I've talked to other people—that the

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thank you, Lori, for this question. It's an important question because the reason I made this recommendation is that we are not getting anywhere using Canada's so-called justice system or with Indian Affairs or the rebranded Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada. There is a co

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yes, a long time ago in the 1990s there was something called the Manitoba justice inquiry. They talked about using indigenous laws for restorative justice. For indigenous laws, I can only speak to the Great Law of Peace, wherein we sit in clans and we talk. We talk until we come

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I'm sorry. I can't. We need to think creatively when we're applying this sort of idea to Canada and the provinces. In Canada, you have federal and provincial jurisdictions, and indigenous jurisdictions have not yet been included, so how do we work through that? We need to think

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  To my knowledge, no, none of that land was ever given away or ceded. In fact, we lost a lot of lives to that, especially after the War of 1812 when our community's population was decimated. Twice in my community, we had smallpox outbreaks, thanks to the British.