Mr. Speaker, I thank the member opposite for her profile of the transformations that are taking place across the country. They can only lead all of us, but more specifically the nations she referred to, to a much better place and a much better future.
A Mohawk elder once walked me through an analogy. One of the great challenges we have in undoing colonialism and the racism attached to it is that the process of creating the challenges we find ourselves facing was a complex and very aggressive one. If the movement out of this is too simplified and too aggressive in return, it could lead to even more problems. In other words, colonialism is about rules, and layers and layers of more rules may create even more damage if we are not careful about how we transform the system.
One of the issues raised around this and referenced by the ITK is the notion that indigenous languages should be attached to geography, which was delineated through colonial map-making, and that the primacy of one language over another should be assigned based on geography.
The member opposite referenced that the name Toronto comes from tkaranto. It is a Mohawk word, but the treaty is held by the Mississaugas. At the time Toronto was named, the Huron-Wendat had care of the land. There are complexities in the way communities are nomadic. There are complexities in the ways colonialism is layered through generations. There are complexities in the way indigenous people hold and share land, nation to nation to nation, without our even being present.
In light of that, does the member opposite favour a geographic, territorial and map-making approach to language preservation, or should language preservation be based on the people who speak a language and the patterns they create for themselves?