If you would try to keep to the amendment I would appreciate it very much. To the amendment. Mr. Pudlat.

(Translation) To the amendment. I don't know if I will be speaking to the amendment, but to the motion with regard to the traditional healing, I have been saved by traditional healing in the past. I am not aware if the traditional healers were being paid at that time, but I have seen traditional healers practising their tradition. I will be supporting the fact that if traditional healing was to be incorporated, that travel should be funded for the patients. I just wanted to state that I have seen traditional healing being practised in the past and I know that there are a lot of Inuit people who are aware of the tradition being practised. I will be supporting the motion. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you. To the amendment. Mr. Zoe.

Thank you. To the amendment. Mr. Gargan.

Mr. Chairman, every summer, around the middle of July, people from at least the southern part of the Mackenzie go down to a place called Lac Saint Ann on a pilgrimage. There are miracles happening there. All those people go there on their own. When that is over, you will see vehicles and vehicles, especially from Fort Rae, coming from this pilgrimage. The whole purpose of healers is not something that is given to just any aboriginal person. Some people have it. Some people feel hopeless because they don't think they can be cured. I refer them to several people down south who do work in those areas, but those are all done on the basis of your state of mind. You have to be able to go over there with good intentions. It's a pilgrimage. You are in a state of mind to either be cured or not cured. It is all based on how you get there. That doesn't happen if you are going to have people buying tickets for you to jump off a plane and you go with those people. You have got to be able to prepare yourself while you are travelling. That is what I mean, it doesn't work if you are not in the right state of mind to see those people. That is why I said it is not all dollars and cents.

If I was in Fort Providence...for example, my mother still does it. She still gathers roots, she still gathers plants, and I go to her when I have physical problems. But I go to the nurse if I had a broken leg or something like that. If I can't see, I go to see an eye doctor. The method of delivering that kind of healing is not based on whether you have a lot of moolah in your pocket. It's all based on a state of mind. For those people who did go on their own, the results are quite amazing. We see this happening...The very traditional being incorporated into the existing system is nothing more than a system that really doesn't mean anything because the healing doesn't happen.

You have to be able to make a lot of sacrifices and that is the whole purpose of healers. Also, it is a community effort; people find that if a member of the family is sick and that it will require that this person travels, it becomes a community concern as opposed to a government concern. Again, I use the example of Fort Rae, they raise money to go to those events. That is the only point I am trying to make. A statement was made by the international...linguistic genocide. The United Nations is saying that 50 out of 53 aboriginal languages in Canada are expected to perish. Now why is that? Is it because it's in the existing system that it is doing that? If it gets gobbled up by the system, then it no longer exists. I believe that even funding it, I'm afraid, will lead to the extinguishment of those healers.

Thank you. To the amendment. Mr. Lewis.

I will be very brief, Mr. Chairman. I think every culture all over the world has the idea that there's a natural, traditional way of helping people to get better and it's been passed on for hundreds and hundreds of years. You learn that this kind of plant will cure a headache or a certain plant will heal a cut quickly. The old doctors were called herbalists. In other words, they were experts on all kinds of plants. It is very often inherited from one generation to another, that knowledge is passed down. It exists all over the world and there is a movement as well to have traditional, natural ways of helping people to become better recognized somehow. That is what is meant in this motion. Why don't we recognize there is expert knowledge always passed from one generation to another about the different ways in which you can help people who are sick. If you just say let's recognize it, then what does that mean? It has to mean something. It seems to me that if you are talking about healing, you are talking about someone who has a certain knowledge about how to do something. If you know who those people are, the kind of gifts they have and the service they offer, then I have no problem in finding some way of recognizing them. But it is not good enough just to say, I recognize it. We all know they exist. It is already a fact. But how is that manifested? Is this a service that people take advantage of? So I find it difficult to support a motion that is so general that it only confirms what we already know. There is nothing new added to it. Thank you.

To the amendment. Mr. Whitford.

Thank you, Mr. Whitford. To the amendment. Mr. Dent.

Thank you. To the amendment. Mr. Koe.

I agree wholeheartedly with my colleague, Mr. Dent. People across the north, as Mr. Dent mentioned, are crying for help. They are crying to be healed. They are crying for all kinds of processes. We've been saying all along -- everybody that I've talked to -- that the current methods don't work. They want something different.

In the province of Manitoba and in some parts of Alberta and Ontario, the hospitals and the system recognize traditional healers and they use these people in the hospitals to help heal people. We have big problems in alcohol and drugs and that is why social services is here. We have big problems in trying to heal people and work with people with alcohol and drug addictions. We have probably the best training system that I'm aware of -- the Metis Institute, out of Edmonton -- and yet, our system doesn't recognize the people that are trained out of there.

The certificates they receive aren't used in the north. The people that go out come back with certificates that aren't recognized as part of whatever degree they're going for, for alcohol and drug training. The alcohol and drug centres in Dettah and Hay River are built there to use the methods and the people that are there -- the traditional aboriginal healing circles and elders. That's why they are there.

As Mr. Dent mentioned, they need a little something else on top of their traditions. They need cash, whatever, to help them go on. They may have to travel somewhere. None of our aboriginal organizations or volunteer groups have the kind of money to bring people from here to there to do these things. It has to have some teeth and that is why the recommendation was made like this. I don't support changing this motion. Thank you.

Thank you. To the amendment. Mr. Arngna'naaq.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I understand what the committee members are saying. I believe I also understand what Mr. Gargan is trying to say. I have seen too many instances where the system -- as we as aboriginal people had -- was used by the people in the immediate area. Traditionally, there was a legal system, a way of correcting people when they had legal problems.

Once the southern Canadians came up north, that was completely destroyed. There is no evidence of it here today in the north. That is what happened when our system of government, a western-style of government, tried to incorporate a traditional method. It overpowers it to the point where it is completely destroyed. Another example is the cultural inclusion program which I spoke of today. Traditionally, this type of program would be taught by parents, uncles or aunts. It is as though the aboriginal people handed this type of teaching to the government on a silver platter saying here, you take it, run with it.

What we have now is a program that is defined by a government who has no understanding, whatsoever, of what my culture is all about. Here we have a cultural program which is recognized by the government, funded by the government and incorporated into the system and has left our young people with an inability to follow traditional lives. All they can really do, in most cases, is finish high school and go on social assistance. They are really not able to hunt or trap and they have nothing to fall back on, traditionally.

What I'm trying to say here is that I believe this government should recognize traditional healing methods -- what little there is left -- and that it should be funded perhaps in emergency cases where a person with medical staff in that community is not able to assist. But, to incorporate the traditional healing methods into our health system, I believe, will slowly deteriorate the traditional methods.

I'll go back to the cultural inclusion program because I've been thinking a lot about that. If the government had recognized this and funded it and gone at the speed at which the people in those communities decided that program should go, then I believe we would have had programs that are effective, run by the people, funded by the government and recognized by the government. They would be effective programs which young people would be able to use.

I stand by what I said earlier about traditional healing methods, that they must be recognized by the government and funded to some extent by the government. But, I believe they should be incorporated by the government at the speed at which the people who have the traditional methods want. If they would like to see it incorporated into the government, then it should be up to them to decide how and when it should be incorporated. Thank you.

To the amendment. Mr. Gargan.

Mr. Chairman, I was also down in the Navajo nation several years ago, and one of the things that makes those programs and teaching so different is that it is not part of the mainstream of society. It's an independent thing. They have their own schools for cultural programs and, within that, they do have traditional healers that teach what knowledge they have in those areas. The success of that is because it's independent. It's not incorporated into any government agency.

The other thing, Mr. Chairman, is that, with regard to the traditional healers, I think I'm getting the message straight. Looking at shamans -- or medicine men, as they are called -- and herbalists, those are the people who have knowledge in those areas. Once you incorporate something like this, it becomes known to everybody else, but practising it doesn't mean much if you're not knowledgable about the whole intent behind it. Ginseng...Rat roots are something like ginseng, too. Again, it's a secret of the oriental people but it's been manipulated by western technology now. It's being grown in abundance and it's used now, people buy them at very exorbitant costs -- maybe the copyright should be the japanese or chinese people but that is not the case.

So, perhaps then, incorporate means that this government has to be able to say that under the non-insurabled health benefits agreement, these are the plants that we will cover or these are the plants that we won't cover. For the Metis people, these are the categories that we will fund. If you want to see a traditional healer, this is it. So it becomes a bureaucracy when it shouldn't be. I agree with where Silas is coming from in that area.

The other thing, Mr. Chairman, is that the courts recognize custom adoption and practice it as such, but it doesn't matter whether or not it's recognized. That fact remains that we still have a lot of aboriginal people who are adopted by non aboriginal people through their private adoption legislation. So by virtue of incorporating this, we then have it in some kind of legislation. It's incorporated, it becomes law, it no longer is recognizable, it doesn't belong to the aboriginal people any more. It belongs to the system. The ownership belongs to the system. The responsibility to deliver then lays with this government. It no longer is the ownership of aboriginal people. I think that's my point, if the intent of the motion is to do that, I don't think Members should support it. I think traditional healing methods must be recognized and should be funded, but should we incorporate it, too? All the success of programs that Mr. Dent alluded to, is not because it was incorporated but because it wasn't.

Thank you. To the amendment. Mr. Zoe.

Mr. Zoe, we are dealing with the amendment at the moment. Maybe after the vote takes place, you can make that suggestion. We have to deal with this amendment first. Thank you for your patience. Mr. Zoe.

To the amendment. Are you ready for the question?

Question.