Madam Speaker, absolutely. I think we need to give the assistance that is needed monetarily and in other ways, such as mental health, healing and support systems for families, to be able to go across the country and find out where there are other similar graves of lost children who never went home. We need to move forward to help. That is a thing we can do now, but I am speaking of some of the things within the reconciliation package and in this motion that ask for things to do, which would mean that we would be imposing things on indigenous communities that are not ready.
The indigenous peoples of Canada are not one amorphous mass of people. They are made up of different communities that have different first nations groups within them that have their own pace at which they are ready to move forward. They have bigger griefs, more griefs. They have a lot of things. We have to listen and work with them. That is what I am trying to say.
There is somebody called Geswanouth Slahoot, known as Chief Dan George. I will always remember what he had to say, when he stated:
Many have been shamed of their Indian ways by scorn and ridicule. My culture is like a wounded deer that has crawled away into the forest to bleed and die alone.
The only thing that can...help us is genuine love...a love that forgives the terrible sufferings your culture...[has imposed on us] when it swept over us like a wave...a beach...a love that forgets and lifts up its head and sees in your eyes [you, Canadians, in your eyes] an answering love of trust and acceptance...
I think that is what I was trying to talk about here. It is not about quick fixes or immediate things. It is not about us all grieving at this one moment and forgetting about it as we move on to something new. It is about that steady moving forward and it is about Canadians taking the guilt, the blame and the shame, to say that all of us, even if we were only born 10 years ago, have to carry that, to acknowledge it.