Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Wela'lin. Thank you. I've been teaching for the last 30 years at universities and I've been using a methodology called the talking circle. The talking circle started with a sacred ceremony, a spiritual ceremony. An eagle feather or a talking stick is passed around, and people speak one at a time.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I think there is a need to educate the public about the reality of indigenous peoples in Canada, about the treaties and the colonization issue, and our own people need to be educated about their own history and their own cultures. We've been colonized for so long that a lot of our cultures and our peoples have lost their connection to the land and the traditional ceremonies and the languages.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I would add, in terms of netukulimk, that we use our indigenous ceremony to negotiate our survival on the land. That's the reason we don't take everything on the land and stockpile. There is actually a spiritual ceremonial balance in terms of negotiating our survival on the land.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Well, in the modern context, we can use the ideology of stewardship. It has its biblical context that man is above the land and the animals, whereas in our culture, we are equal to the plants and the birds and the fish. They are our relatives. I think it's more of a concept of trying to incorporate the indigenous perspective of land, especially our relationship and how we treat these elements that are part of our culture.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  The treaties of peace and friendship were more about peace and friendship, not about the land. When we made agreements with the British, we hadn't really agreed to give up the land. The British only assumed that they defeated us, and they defeated the French and took over sovereignty of the land.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  All of that is to say that we have a very sacred relationship to the land, and it wasn't given up by us in the Peace and Friendship Treaties that were signed in eastern Canada, pre-Confederation in the 1700s.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  My name is Stephen Augustine, and I'm a hereditary chief on the Mi'kmaq Grand Council. The reason why they call me a hereditary chief is that I come from a long line of hereditary chiefs. My father's name was Patrick. His father was Thomas Theophile. Thomas's father was Thomas, and that Thomas's father was Noël.