Thank you, Chair.
Thank you for being here today.
I'd like to start with you, Ms. Aird and Ms. Redfern. The committee did a study on parks and protected areas last spring. We went out and met with witnesses in some of the national parks, including Jasper. One of the chiefs who came and spoke with us used some words that have stayed with me ever since. He said, “We do not have a written language, so the Creator wrote our story on the land.” They proceeded to show us photographs of one site in particular, which is on private property. I, and I think many of my colleagues, wondered how that could not be protected.
I will back up about 10 years. I was manager with provincial parks in southeastern B.C., and we hired a Ktunaxa woman to do cultural studies on values inside parks. Of course, they were reluctant to share the results of that study, which I absolutely understood.
How do we build a better future for protecting indigenous sites? There seems to be a fair bit of mistrust to get past, to start with, in terms of sharing values. What are the most important steps the federal government can take to start better protecting indigenous sites?