Madam Speaker, culture is rooted in land. When they dispossessed us of our land, they dispossessed us of our power. Our language and teachings come from the land. If we look at what is happening across the country right now, indigenous people are rising to defend their lands. That is our lifeblood.
All we have left are these small parcels of land. We have less than 1% of the total land mass in the country, yet governments continue to infringe on our human rights, violently taking us off our lands and trying to maintain this neo-colonial project to integrate us. We just want to be on our land. We want to stay on the little bit of land we have, which is less than 1% of the total Canadian land mass right now. We want to live our way of life, our culture and pass the teachings down to future generations.
When we dispossess people of their lands, we dispossess them of their identity and culture. That is what we are seeing around the country. They are doing what anybody would do if somebody came onto their lands, without cause, and took them out to push forward a political and economic agenda. We need to stop that.