Fundamentally, the biggest issue we face is that when governments begin to deal with first nation issues, we're viewed as a liability. My understanding is that the government, when it looks at a myriad of issues, sees more than a trillion dollars' worth of liability, and that hampers much of the innovative methods by which we can begin to move forward.
What I've always maintained and said is, let us take on the responsibility of liability. Let us look after ourselves, because we know the priorities of our first nation people's needs.
This means recognizing the fundamental powers of first nation governments, meaning access to the resources that are exploited within our traditional territories. The way to do that would be to ensure that we have a resource charge; that we have skin in the game. One of the best incentives is not federal government or provincial government programs, but economic power. That is the biggest incentive for creating wealth and not managing poverty.