Thank you for being here today, Chief.
I also want to acknowledge that we are welcomed here on Coast Salish land. I'm from Anishinaabe territory in Ontario, quite a distance away.
I was the executive director at Grand Council Treaty No. 3. In terms of the long-term issues with suicide, one of the things I've said over and again is that we're never going to be out of the cycle of dependency, the cycle of depression, or the cycle of low self-worth if we're always beggars in our own land.
I don't know what the situation is around your community. I was just looking at where it was on the map. I worked for a brief time in Yellowknife—actually north of Yellowknife—at a gold mine called Colomac, which became defunct a long time ago. I worked with some of your community members there, and with people from Rae-Edzo.
As I see it, one of the options for first nations is to have a real stake in the resource revenue sharing. In the western provinces, generally that would mean that the money the province would normally collect would go to the first nations. I've been struggling with this for years. When the resource runs out....
Where you are, I know there aren't many trees, but there's probably a mining industry. There's probably a huge mining industry right across the whole Northwest Territories, so looking at ways of doing it....
In my area of the country there is an 80-year turnaround for softwood trees, but it's a so-called renewable resource. If we can get real revenue sharing where we collect the resources for our community, then that's long-term, sustainable, predictable funding to allow us not to beg for money in our own land through contribution agreements. You must know what those are like. INAC bureaucrats or Health Canada bureaucrats dictate what we do in our communities, whereas we know—or should know—what to do best, because we're on the ground living it every day.
Is there any potential? Has your community looked at the option of getting into negotiations with the Government of the Northwest Territories or the Government of Canada regarding resource revenue sharing ?