Thank you, Mr. Speaker-elect. Language is culture. Language is important. As a Métis woman, I realize my family down in Paddle Prairie lost their language. They don't even know which language they speak anymore. They are desperately trying to regain language. I don't want to get there. I don't want to be a population of people who are struggling to find out who we are, to figure out what our language is. We have one of the strongest jurisdictions in the whole of Canada in our languages, but we are quickly losing them, so it has to be a priority. I believe language is more than culture. It's about self-esteem. When you can speak your language and you feel proud in what you speak, it makes you feel proud as a person. Taking away your language is one more chip to making people feel bad about themselves and to taking away a society.
Currently, the federal government does give the Government of the Northwest Territories money for language preservation and revitalization. We are doing some good work. We have money going into the education system. Some schools are bringing elders into their schools, taking children on the land. We're working within our whole government departments to actually have access so that those 11 languages aren't available just when we have the appropriate translators in the House, which I appreciate, but also when anyone phones to any government building, that they'll be able to speak their first language and actually get services. That's critical, but the key is there's also money that we give to the Indigenous governments.
I'm careful to say this because I see that it's important that we have money for schools to be able to promote it and that we have money to promote the GNWT for access to services, but I believe in my heart that the strongest way of retaining and revitalizing the languages is giving it to the Indigenous governments and letting them use the money to preserve. It is their language, and they know what they're doing, so I think that the best thing to do is again to sit down with them and talk to them and say, "This is what we're using the money for. Is it the right way? Is it not?" and letting them take the lead. It's no longer appropriate for the GNWT to tell them how we will preserve their language and revitalize it. It's time for them to tell us what they want to do so that they can preserve their own culture and their own language. Thank you, Mr. Speaker-elect.