The best way to answer, Jamie, is this: We have indigenous governments already, and if you look at [Technical difficulty—Editor] challenges that we've faced in this country for a while, you have the hereditary chiefs and the elected chiefs. What's important is to let them work it out. That's their business, not ours. It's not yours. It's not mine. It's their business. They need to recognize that. We need to respect their governments and their structures.
From that perspective, I think, as we move forward, we're just making transitional ideology changes in this country, recognizing indigenous governments to be truly equal governments. We're not even there yet, but we're getting our mindset to move towards that. It's like me getting a group of Canadians together and saying, “I represent Canada now. I'm now the new Prime Minister of Canada because I have a group of citizens behind me now.” You would tell me, “You're crazy. Go to the hell. I got elected as an MP. I sit in the Conservative Party. We are the opposition at this point in time, maybe a future government.” You would not accept that I get a group of people together overnight, call myself a new name and become Prime Minister.
We have indigenous governments. Let them do their jobs, and let them clarify their own issues. That's up to them. When we try to stick our noses into their business, that is where trouble lies.
For example, in the federation, in 1967 we created our Constitution. It's been standing strong since 1967. We are recognized by the Supreme Court of Canada as the rightful voices of our government for our people, so from that perspective I think it's very clear that we're getting there. We still have a way to go unfortunately for citizens to recognize that indigenous people have governments that are equal to federal, provincial and municipal governments, that we have the same jurisdictional powers as their own governments. Once we get there, I think we'll solve that problem.