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.