We view a gun from a hunter's perspective and a treaty rights perspective. It's a tool. It's a tool that we use for doing a lot of things.
I talked about, for example, our rites of passage of the young hunters, the young boys. When you go out to hunt, you're not just hunting. You're teaching your child courage and you're bonding. You are passing on protocols, ceremonial protocols, of how to look after your kill. There are the rites of passage, the reverence to the animal and the tobacco. Along with that tool comes many teachings and also matters of safety. When you take a gun away, you take away the opportunity for that oral tradition to happen.
The gun is also used, of course, to provide sustenance to elders. When we look at poverty, we supplement our incomes with wild meat. Also, there's our food sovereignty and the way of life, the culture, that we were promised in treaties. A sacred covenant was made that we would always have that way, and to take away the gun takes away so much of who we are and where we come from.
That's what I meant by that statement.