This park proposal has a 50-year history. It goes back to 1969 when the proposal was put to the chief of the community of Lutsel K'e, then called Snowdrift, but he was told at the time that he could not continue indigenous activities within the park. They couldn't hunt, couldn't trap and couldn't fish. The chief took it back to his people, and they said they weren't interested.
Nevertheless, there was a decision to protect about 7,000 square kilometres from a future allocation. There were a number of attempts over the decades to try to get it going. Finally in 2006, the Minister of the Environment at that time signed a memorandum of understanding with the community of Lutsel K’e. You'll hear this story tomorrow because you'll have the chief of Lutsel K’e Dene First Nation appearing. The elders there, the community, decided that they wanted to pursue a national park reserve because they were concerned about the amount of mineral staking going on in the area.
They wanted to enter into a collaborative relationship, so we moved forward with that. Following the devolution of the lands and waters of the Northwest Territories to the Government of Northwest Territories in about 2014, the territorial government eventually invited us to work with them to negotiate a boundary and a national park reserve.
What you've seen is the collaboration of Canada, the GNWT post-devolution, which is significant, and the Lutsel K'e Dene First Nation as the prime community pushing it with the support of the NWT Métis nation and others.