I'd like to make what will be a somewhat paradoxical comment. I believe that the weight of colonization absolutely should not be denied. It must not be forgotten. We are all responsible. There's really something that has to be denounced. I think it has to be officially recognized that Canada was a colonial state. It still is. We still have a long way to go.
Here's the paradoxical part of my comment. Every time we establish initiatives and say that colonization is responsible, from a pragmatic point of view, that doesn't produce a lot of courses of action. I think this historical fact has to be acknowledged, but that, once it's said, we have to move on to action. We have to stop making the causes of colonization the driver of action.
As for recommendations, I think we really have to start supporting aboriginal people in order to develop governance. That's a fashionable word, I know, and we don't always like it. I'm going to give you an example. I'm conducting a study on the Inuit community of Kuujjuaq for the Department of Justice. Knowing the problem involved in imposing methods of regulation that absolutely do not suit those communities, I'm still going to place considerable emphasis on the fact that the punitive and repressive approach, which includes the police and justice systems, does not work. On the day we've understood that a social problem cannot be resolved by means of a justice system, we'll have taken a major step. However, we aren't stuck with that. We're still attaching importance, above all, to the fact that this is an offence. When a man beats a woman, its an offence, of course, but the legal answer isn't the right answer. They have the courage to go beyond that and to do something else.
I'm suggesting an approach for the community of Kuujjuaq. In my mind, the central course of action is to rebuild social regulation in the communities. How do we do that? By grouping together all existing resources and supporting all existing forms of regulation; by creating joint action; by having an orchestra conductor who makes the actions consistent and who is like a link in a chain; by no longer excluding people because they have committed an offence; by adopting inclusive approaches; by reinforcing all the initiatives so that people can take charge of their lives. So, yes, that's governance.
We have to rebuild this social regulation. I believe in this. In particular, we can do it through initiatives like circles, committees and local organizations. We have to reinforce leadership, target the few families in which things are going well and which can become very high-profile models. Lastly, it has to be understood that aboriginal people have abilities. It's simply that the aboriginal communities have lost confidence in them. The fact remains that those abilities exist. We have to go and find them.