In some ways, there are a couple of examples, one right at home: the sea otter. We call it k'wak'wak, which means it eats the best of everything. Everything that you would love to eat, the sea otter will outdo you on: urchins, clams, all the shellfish. It's completely thrown out of balance back home where I come from, in Ahousat. It's always a mystery to our people how it is that we come to list species.
Of course, we have a deep and long-standing relationship with the sea otter, where more recently the Okanagan nation is talking about the chinook, the need to protect the chinook.
So it really is both, isn't it, where you get species that are identified and species that are not, even when the first nations are suggesting, based on their interaction, their social, their food, and rights and title. Of course, again I go back to the court case that I just came out of in British Columbia for my own community of Ahousat.
It really does reflect back then on, and speaks to, the earlier question about COSEWIC. There's participation with COSEWIC but not an adequate level in terms of how traditional knowledge is accessed or used. How is it brought to bear? We're suggesting here a shared notion that we need to be much more involved and strengthen that respect or recognition of not only the information, but also the jurisdictional aspects that need to be brought to bear when we're talking about listing.
We have a fundamental, out-of-balance situation back home right now when it comes to sea otter in my territories. I'll be home again hopefully soon, and once again, it's always falling on the local communities—the fishers, our fisheries community—about how we're going to respond to this externally imposed notion about protection of a certain species.
So it's important to examine this as adding value. Somehow we get caught up in this idea that it's going to take away value or that it's disrespectful of other jurisdictions. No, we're looking at a mutual respect and recognition.