I agree with Sarah, in the sense that in Michael's community and in Eskasoni, and in Sipekne'katik, where Shurenda and I are from, while we experience the same sorts of trauma and the communities are responding in the same ways, the solution is not necessarily going to be the same.
Perhaps in Michael's community they still speak their language. Perhaps in my community many people are still traditional. In the Mohawk communities, they still are very tied to their old and traditional ways. In Sipekne'katik and in Mi'kma'ki, it is not like that: we are regularly attempting to return to our old ways.
Determining which factors are causing the greatest amount of trauma would be difficult when trying to employ a solution on a national scale. This is not to say that a national scale is not a possibility, because, as we see with the government and with the various tribes here in Canada, in some cases it applies to one tribe, and in other cases it does not apply. In Nova Scotia, we have a certain gas tax, and in New Brunswick that gas tax is not there, yet both nations, both tribes, are the same. We are Mi'kma'ki.
The government has perhaps inadvertently—hopefully inadvertently, although the pattern would suggest otherwise—caused dissension among the tribes themselves by offering certain things to one and other things to others, taking away things from some, and so on and so forth.
A national-scale solution can be applied only after all of the necessary rocks have been turned over at the local level, in order to finally be able to define what it is that can help and can work, with perhaps a range or a scale of possibilities within a national program, but the people themselves, aboriginal people, must be dealt with as one with the government. I firmly believe—and this is strictly my own belief—that we should indeed be viewed as one, because if we're not viewed as one, that's where we get into problems when one tribe is given something but there's nothing for another.
