Thank you.
Most of the indigenous communities across Canada are located in very remote places, and the average unemployment rate among all of the reserve communities in Canada is over 25%. That's worse than the Great Depression numbers in the U.S.
People have been living on their land for 10,000 years or more—the people I come from, 14,000 years—and there are very few opportunities. That doesn't mean they're going to jump at any opportunity and abandon the environmental stewardship they've taken over the land for all of that time. That is always at the forefront of their consideration in entering into any project. When projects are proposed for their territory, they look at them very carefully. They examine them from a social and environmental point of view. When they decide to enter into those projects, that may be the only opportunity they would have for any kind of development.
In the community I'm from, Lax Kw’alaams, on the north coast of B.C., there was an LNG pipeline proposed. At that time, my brother John was the elected chief of the community, and the community voted 70% in favour of the project. The project would have flowed, over a period of time, about a billion dollars in benefits to the community. That included monies for education, training, housing, roads, all the things that most indigenous communities direly need.
When they vote to support a project, what really irks them is what they see as the meddling and interference from people who have been termed eco-colonialists, these groups whose only interest is in stopping projects, and government interference, where the government is only listening to the side of the project that supports their politics.
They feel it's very unfair. They feel that a lot of opportunities have been snatched from them. The feeling is so strong in western and northern Canada that in fact there's an event being organized on this very topic, called Indigenous Nexus 2023. It's—