Thank you.
Seeing what's happening to our world today.... Just recently we felt another impact on our livelihood from the sealing industry. The Europeans once again affected us with their marine fishing; that's happening more and more. It's fairly new to us up this way in Arctic Bay, but we've always known marine fishing is around us. We want to have more economic measures to make our livelihood up here, because it's been our livelihood for hundreds of years. All we have in our territory are marine mammals and land animals.
Now more and more fishing is coming in our direction. We feel the younger generation growing up now could have more to look forward to with the fishing industry if the 0A boundary could be moved past Lancaster Sound and we were given the opportunity to fish in our area instead of being shut down, because our economy is affected by the European sealing industry. It seems like our livelihood up here is getting harder, that more is being taken away from us, and people are tending to look elsewhere for jobs.
Our livelihood depends on what surrounds our communities, marine mammals and all that. In that sense we are asking and needing help with the small craft harbours we were talking about so we could proceed with our livelihood and be who we are up here.