Originally it was a process of engagement with Canada at the front end. As you know, in 1973, around that time, Canada had introduced the white paper. The white paper was rejected by many aboriginal people across this country as being just an exercise in assimilation, which was not something we wanted to see as a people.
Our people pulled together. At that time we were pretty separated here in the Yukon too. We had the Yukon Association of Non-Status Indians, which represented all the non-status Indians. We had the Yukon Native Brotherhood, which represented all the status Indians. There was the Yukon Aboriginal Women's Council. I can't remember all the names because I was just a boy back then, but they were all quite divisional in their thinking on how to approach it. They all had the same cause that they wanted to champion, to deal with poverty, low education rates, and all that sort of stuff, but the real debate and division was on how to tackle it.
Eventually it got to a point where the engagements had too many different representations. As a consequence, I think, as I read the material, it allowed for the other governments to not be as responsive as they needed to be. When they amalgamated here in the Yukon, they amalgamated with the firm view that they were going to amalgamate based on their historical relationship to each other and not because someone put a geographical boundary at that degree and that latitude to say that they're separated, because that was something imposed upon our people.
We also recognize that the distinction of “status” and “non-status” was something that was also very divisive in our communities. For example, in my family I was a status Indian. My sister wasn't, even though we had the same parents, the same mother and father, because of the application of the act. I was born just before my parents got married, so I became a status Indian. Since my father was of mixed blood and he wasn't status and my mother married him, she lost her status, so then my sister became a non-status.
We knew that was a very divisive issue in our communities, and people started wearing these tags. It wasn't simply an administrative tool any more for the Department of Indian Affairs to distinguish how much money would be rolled out to pay for Indian support; it became a very divisive thing amongst the people. You know, you're not really an Indian, but you are. We learned to get beyond that.
Then we engaged ourselves with Canada, as I mentioned, and as a response to the white paper we tabled Together Today for Our Children Tomorrow with Canada, indicating that we wanted to have a different approach to the relationship between our peoples.
You have to remember at that time there was a lot of talk about the Alaska Highway pipeline coming through here. There were a lot of people talking about a lot of big money and a lot of wealth was going to be made. We said, hang on a minute, we missed the fur trade, we missed the gold rush, and we missed the mining boom of the 1960s and 1970s. We're not going to miss this one. As I was saying in my presentation, our communities had better get a benefit from this. Historically, every time there's a major economic stimulus, we get nothing.
In terms of what Canada can do, it's to make sure, particularly because you have a higher jurisdiction in the territories than you do in the provinces, that systems are set up so that local northern communities really get maximum benefit from the things that happen in their own backyard. If we had the proper basic infrastructure in these communities, and I'm not suggesting that it's going to solve all our problems, but it would put us miles ahead of the game if people have healthy environments upon which to try to get wealth.
When your're trying to deal with a plaguing problem...I admit openly, publicly and otherwise, that I've had my challenges with alcoholism and drug abuse in my past, and I know what those challenges are from an individual perspective. When you feel that there's no hope of getting a job or any meaningful role, you have no hope or prospect of doing anything other than shovelling ditches, and this, that, and the other thing, it helps to perpetuate a negativity about yourself.
When you go to get a drink of water and you can taste the minerals in the water, when you can see the open dumping of sewage in freshwater streams, when you can see all kinds of things going on around you and you seem powerless to do anything, that actually reinforces what people are already feeling as a result of that poverty. It helps perpetuate the despair and the hopelessness in it.
If we could get the basic infrastructure, I think it's one of the major building blocks for getting us away from poverty, but that alone in itself is not going to help. I think the feds have to really look at a type of stimulus outside of the grandiose projects. We know about the expanded exploration for oil and gas, the Mackenzie pipeline, the Alaska pipeline, diamonds, off-sea drilling, all those big, big, glory projects, which are fine if they happen. But when you look at local economies, what do you have available? How can you create a sustainable economy that allows the greatest margin of people...?
I had the opportunity to tour the Scandinavian countries in Europe, which have similar geographical terrain, climate, population, and challenges. I think we could learn from other countries. They have some very interesting approaches to local economy stimulation. We're very open-minded here in the Yukon about exploring what those are. I would encourage Canada to explore those things, too.