Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you. Karon, we have two sets of Métis. We have the settlement, which is land-based, and then we have the Métis who are intertwined in the rural and urban centres, and they don't have a land base. When we're talking about the Métis, in my mind there are two separate types of infrastructure.

Canadian Heritage committee  Ms. McIvor.

Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you very much. Another thing that concerns me is what kind of oversight you think is necessary. Obviously, we have 90 different indigenous languages on different scales. I heard that one community has only nine speakers of their language. I'm not sure who should be doing the oversight.

Canadian Heritage committee  I'm just thinking about the priorities. How do you set priorities? Obviously, every indigenous language is important, but some are in a different state. If we don't do something now, some will be lost to history. There has to be somebody deciding that certain groups need attention right now, because if we wait any longer, we might lose them to history.

Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you so much. I thank the witnesses for coming out today. Obviously, this is a subject that has many twists and turns. I mean, we're looking at the educational jurisdictional issues. Moving forward, we have to address the way we're going to roll out the funding and put the mechanisms in place.

Canadian Heritage committee  Madam Chair, I'll share the rest of my time with my colleague.

Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Chief Bellegarde, for coming here and expressing your opinions. I agree with you totally; there has to be involved education, whether it's in elementary school or in university. There has to be a holistic approach to this. Many languages are on the verge of collapsing.

Canadian Heritage committee  Can you tell me what you think about culture and language having to be together?

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes, and I'm struggling with how we do this in the post-secondary setting. Obviously we can't just have someone who has knowledge of the language or speaks the language, because there also has to be the ability of someone who comes from the culture in order to teach it correctly.

Canadian Heritage committee  My niece and nephew learned Cree from their kohkom. They didn't learn from mom and dad. They learned it from their grandmother, their kohkom.

Canadian Heritage committee  You're right. There's so much opportunity in using the resources that are already available, which are the elders and grandmothers or kohkoms, depending on how you want to refer to your grandparents. What initial steps would you like to see? What should we do? Off the bat, what should we concentrate on?

Canadian Heritage committee  Just to clarify, I'm looking at this and wondering is it more registry over genealogy, or genealogy has nothing to do with it, and it's all registry?

Canadian Heritage committee  The point I'm trying to get across is a lot of people do not choose to register. They're still Métis; their parents are Métis. If they want to register.... The way I understand it is the Métis nation is a society. Correct me if I'm wrong. It's a society, and people register to the society.

Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you, Madam Chair. I was hoping for seven minutes, but I'll take five. I'd like to welcome our guests. It's a very interesting conversation we're having. I thought I had a good grasp on who is Inuit, first nation or Métis, but I'm more confused now about the Métis, because during the conversations, not all Métis are Métis unless they're registered through some registry.

Canadian Heritage committee  I understand that. Did you meet with the settlements yet?