Good evening. Thank you for taking this time from your busy schedule. We've been travelling just to be part of this, and I'm grateful that you could come into our hometown. This is our home. I'm the chief here, and I'm glad to see the panel. I speak on behalf of the chief and council, the elders, and the 1,400 members of my band.
You will probably know from television that the mining industry has been among us for 80 years. Yet economic development has always been on the other side of the fence. On this topic, we have a lot of detailed information that my colleague from across the lake is going to be touching on.
It's about time that Canada listened to us. As a newly elected chief, I know that there is an abundance of youth and elders who have not been represented. One of the reasons is that economic development and education are big ticket items here. We need to raise the level of education and keep pushing ahead with economic development funding arrangements. That's a big one. We need more direct funding to our first nation in order to move forward and become sustainable.
With that, I'm going to turn this over to my colleague, Chief Steve Nitah.
Thank you.