I have a few comments to make about this activity. Probably, over the next two or three years, there is going to be a great deal of debate over the treaties. We have discussed this several times in committee and in our Caucus meetings, too. I realize, as the Minister has pointed out, that when we deal with treaty matters, it was a bilateral thing involving the aboriginal people themselves and the federal government. But, it bothers me a little bit that we seem to be reverting to the period around 1975, when there was a great deal of discussion about treaties. I still have, at home, a large red sheet called the Dene Declaration. I have two or three copies of it.
I was reminded of it when we were in Fort Simpson with the Standing Committee on Legislation, that the room where we were discussing the powers of municipalities was, in fact, the room in which this declaration first saw the light of day. Many people recall it very vividly because it stated very clearly that the Government of Canada is not the government of the Dene, and certainly the Government of the Northwest Territories wasn't their government either.
It seems to me that we find the discussion of treaty rights comes up from time to time, and it seems as if we are back now in that same period of 1975 when we haven't seen all attempts to enshrine in our constitution things that would satisfy people, then people are obviously going to revert to those obligations that ensued from treaties that were signed at the end of the last century to the end of 1921. I am going to be quite brief on this, Mr. Chairman, but there is a lot to be said about it. It may be that, over the next two years, what has to be said will be said. It is very clear to me, from my understanding of where we stand in relation to land and aboriginal rights, that we are again at that very critical point in our history. What is going to happen over the next two or three years is going to certainly determine the final outcome.
As far as I have been able to ascertain from my own understanding of the events that led up to both the treaties that concern us, was always the question of jurisdiction and whether, in fact, you could apply Canadian law if you did not have jurisdiction over the land, that your claim was part of your territory. In 1899, when there was a tremendous interest in the gold fields of the Yukon and the concern about the rule of law and order, the fears that people were going to come up from California and cause chaos, that you would have a wild west much in the same way that the Americans had a wild west, would also occur in the Yukon. It was very important, then, to establish posts like they did in Fort McPherson, for example, in Dawson, and later on in Herschel Island, when there was a great fear about Americans coming in and flouting Canadian traditions, customs and laws. It was important to establish this was your land, your territory, so that Canadian law would apply in that territory.
The whole history of the establishment of jurisdiction in Canada has related to the ability of Canadians to be able to apply its laws within that jurisdiction. From my reading of what happened in 1899 and also in 1921, there was a tremendous fear that you could get the kind of chaos in the west that had happened in the western United States, when they had a lawless society. There was tremendous difficulty to get people to recognize law. Canadians were concerned that that shouldn't happen in Canada. For those reasons that is why, from what I can make out, treaties were entered into in 1921, simply because the very first oil fields in western Canada were discovered in Norman Wells. Suddenly, it was an amazing phenomenon that, here in western Canada, we have our first discovery of this new black gold. There was the same fear that it was going to be chaos and we had to establish that this is our territory. We had to establish that we could, in fact, enforce our own laws under Canadian jurisdiction.
What I have heard recently is that there is a different interpretation of what those laws are all about, what they meant and so on. I can't argue with anybody who says that they have a different interpretation of why things happened the way they did that long ago. I wasn't even born then. Nobody in this Assembly was born at that particular time. So, we have to go by what we read or what we are told. It is probably the wrong time to begin a debate on this subject, but I am concerned that we have begun a process anyway, without any debate in this House, without any discussion in Cabinet, about the major issue that is in front of us on how we are going to deal with the issue. When is this government going to deal with it? It's fine to go off to Edmonton and to show support and so on, but we have to have a good understanding of what it is we're showing support for. What is the position of our government? We've never had a full debate as to where we stand on all this in our Assembly. It is just something of an exercise, if you like, that we have to go and visit and show support.
I agree that if you sit in the wings and don't say anything or do anything, things will take off without you and you will eventually get lost. But it seems to me that before we begin major commitments to anybody in this part of Canada, it should be clear what the position of our government is, what exactly it is that we would like to see happen.
If we begin assuming there's going to be a different way of doing business and a different description of reality, let's hear what it is. Let's get a clear definition from our own government about which way it's going, and what it's understanding is of the jurisdiction of the Canadian government. It seems to me that's the root of the issue. I would be much happier if we had these kinds of discussions in the Assembly itself, because it's a huge public issue. I would be very concerned, for example, if suddenly next year we had a whole lot of school boards in Yellowknife. This is the biggest aboriginal community in the Northwest Territories. Are we now going to have a whole lot of boards here in Yellowknife deciding what's going to happen? Is this the vision we have or is it something different that we don't know about?
We have to think ahead about what the commitment is that we have in terms of jurisdiction and how that jurisdiction is going to be mandated. Because, let's face it, there is no federal Department of Education. It doesn't exist. That's just one example of where we have to be clear thinking about what it is we want to take as a position with relation to jurisdiction, as a public government in this part of the Northwest Territories. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.