Respectfully, I don't want to come across as ignorant or too bold here, but I'll just say that there are a lot of things that should have happened. A lot of things should have taken place.
One thing that my forefathers would say is that residential schools shouldn't have happened, but we have to move forward. We have to try to practise what we know, and progress that is something that we understand. It's energy that we understand, too. Energy is spiritual.
I represent, like I said, a coalition. Our numbers in Alberta alone are in the tens of thousands from each nation. Saddle Lake Cree Nation has close to 15,000. You look at Maskwacis—there are 20,000.
Our numbers don't resemble how many numbers they have in other provinces. You go to Saskatchewan, and there are 72 nations there. In Alberta, there are 48 nations. You go to B.C., and there are 200 and something nations there. Our numbers are pretty high when it comes to demographics. There are a lot of leaders there who look to energy for survival.
Keep in mind that we haven't been at the table. It's going on over a century that we haven't been at the table to leave our thumbprint on resource development and to help maybe bring balance to what we see and what you and all your colleagues are talking about today and what a great leader from the NDP spoke about today as well.
I hear that, and we echo that. We're all responsible.
When we go out and do something, for anything that we do, if we take something from mother earth, we offer something first, because our natural laws are God-created and given. Canadian law is man-made. To activate a Canadian law, the way we look at it—and you hear it from elders—when you do something wrong with man-made laws, you get a sentence and something bad comes out of it. You break the law.
In our natural laws, you give first. You go take a plant from mother earth, you get a good smudge and something good comes to you. That's an ideology and an example I give back to you.