When you have a negotiator who comes to your chiefs and says, “Here's the package. Here's the deal. Take it or leave it,” I don't see how that is negotiation. I don't see how that begins to address moderate livelihood.
Many of our communities, because of the dire poverty, had signed onto these initial agreements 21 years ago in the hope of helping build our economies, and 21 years later, why is it taking so long?
I've shared a stack of documents as well with the participants here. They weren't available today, but it speaks to our efforts over the last 10 years to try to get ministers to the table to talk about this. This isn't in the last three months. This has been going on constantly.