I've been fortunate to inherit the hard work of many who've come before me. I'll be the first to acknowledge that. It was the chief councillors and the band councillors of the early days who recognized that the work of running the community in town and trying to pursue the land title was too much. It was a lot of work. They brought some funds and initiated a council dedicated specifically to this. It started out with that early co-operation.
What really underpins this unity and collective approach is the hereditary system. The surviving members of our nation, early in the contact period.... I have to share this. Estimates of our population pre-contact range from 20,000 to 50,000 people at different times. With the coming of smallpox and other introduced diseases, there was a point in the early 1900s when our population was reduced to about 600 people or just under 600 people on Haida Gwaii.
The surviving hereditary chiefs, title holders and all of the people came together collectively to ensure that we would move forward with one voice and that together we would all manage the territory. We still all recognize each other's traditional territories, but we move as a nation. We're in a survival mode. That's been reaffirmed in the constitution through a Haida Accord document that everyone has committed to collectively work through. There have been patience, persistence and discipline along the way.
According to our constitution, in our law-making authority through our House of Assembly, our votes are by a three-quarter majority. Anything that moves through has the strong support of three quarters of the people in the process, which reflects the nation. Some things that come down to that very close margin can sometimes create greater division, but this three-quarter majority approach, I think, has also been quite strong. It's the commitment of everybody to continue to participate and support each other in this journey.