Thank you, Mr. Chair, and members of the committee.
I'm going to be giving my presentation in French because it will be easier for me. I will try to be slower because I don't have anything prepared for that.
Thank you very much for inviting us here. It is an honour. It is important to get the opinions of a number of organizations or members of the aboriginal communities.
I won't repeat everything my colleague Michelle Bélanger said about small museums and aboriginal museums. We are experiencing appreciably the same situation. The Musée amérindien de Mashteuiatsh was established in 1977. We went through a major expansion in 1998, and our goal and role are to promote and conserve the past and present history of the members of our community, of the entire Pekogami Innu nation.
With regard to the role that we can play in the festivities for Canada's 150th anniversary, on the one hand, as was mentioned earlier, not all the people of the first nations necessarily have the same desire to take part in those festivities considering all the history surrounding Canada's creation. However, the festivities may spur action or the introduction of tools enabling the various aboriginal nations to redevelop, to recreate a sense of belonging to and pride in Canada's history. As an organization that transmits history, we have that role and that ability to focus on what the aboriginal peoples have contributed since the discovery of Canada, and even before that. The idea is to enable those people, those nations, the members of our nations to feel a certain pride in what they have contributed throughout that history.
Of course, our financial resources are always limited. We do little with little in the way of resources or means. As Ms. Bélanger mentioned in connection with her museum, we are a recognized organization, of course, a museum recognized by the Government of Quebec. We have been receiving minor, although stable, operating funding for many years, as a result of which our small team must constantly find additional, independent funding through programs that are often ad hoc and that do not always assist in taking sustainable action.
If we want the festivities to contribute something to our little museums and to the aboriginal nations, I believe it is necessary to think and take action or to grant funding that will enable our small institutions to make presentations or developments, whether it be exhibitions or other things of that kind. That would help put the emphasis on the role and history of aboriginal peoples in Canada's creation. Thus, if we manage to make people in the communities proud and enthusiastic about their history, we may come out winners in that regard. We will be able to help the people of the first nations be participants in Canada's history and feel that they have had a role to play and still have a role to play, I hope, in Canada's development, in its present and future history.
I also believe it is important to note certain elements from the past because that is somewhat part of the process. Without wanting to address the political aspect or anything that might approach it, I will say that the members of our community had the opportunity to take part in the opening activities of the Vancouver Games. Some people in our community, and even those who took part, felt from the way things were done and the presentation of the event that a secondary role was assigned to the members of the first nations. That of course, once again, made us feel that an attempt was being made to use the nations' history without allowing the members of the community to take part in it.
In conclusion, I believe it is necessary, in the context of the 150th anniversary, to re-establish ties, opportunities for the aboriginal peoples and nations. That can be done through museums, among other things. We must restore aboriginal nations' pride and emphasize the role they played in Canada's creation and earlier history. Regardless of what action is taken, it must be concrete and go beyond the festivities of the 150th anniversary. History will not stop there. There will be other celebrations and other actions, and we must always think for the long term.
Thank you very much.