If you don't mind, I will go first.
I think it's a very important question, the whole thing, and telling our story. Canada is doing the right stuff in reconciliation, giving that space an opportunity for making a new relationship with indigenous people.
Education is lacking. We all went to school. What was taught in your books? I remember the Prime Minister said during the time we announced the TRC calls to action that he went to a private school. He said he wasn't going to make it secret. He was in a private school and he guessed everybody knows that, but when they got to the indigenous chapter, the teacher said they should skip it because it was boring.
In today's society we all strive toward bringing better values of diversity of our people and all that, but look at what happened in Nova Scotia when we had the Cornwallis statue situation, and everywhere else. Non-education brings racism and doesn't bring out the good values of our people.
If you look at first contact—not the show, but first contact itself—it was like an Atlantic tsunami wave that comes and erases the culture. When you find nobody in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, it's because the tsunami wave was first contact. The wave didn't reach B.C. Then we ask why B.C. has all these very cultural vibrant places. The wave comes back. We're affected the most and the longest by with European contact.
This is why we need repatriation of those items to properly tell those stories, because right now our people are trying to learn their identity. Remember—one minute, and I'm closing on this—we were labelled Indians, then savages, then Indians again, then aboriginals, then after the longest time everybody was comfortable with first nations people. Then overnight we were indigenous people. We keep getting relabelled because we can't tell our own story. We have other people telling us on our behalf who we are.
I'm Mi'kmaq. The day will come when it's not a hindrance on the government that there are too many tribes. There are 58 tribes here. Embrace that. Don't look at it as a problem. We're not the Indian problem. There's a vibrant diversity of cultures here. My kids need to learn the Mi'kmaq way, but they have learned the Algonquin way, the Cree, the Dene. They borrowed those styles because they really wanted to be part of the identity of an indigenous person. I need to be able to teach them properly by bringing some of that stuff back home properly, whether it's tapes or whatever.