Mr. Speaker, I wanted to make some comments about resources and our attitudes towards them as a Member of this Legislature.

We know that the north is full of resources, but we have yet, on the national or even territorial scale, been able to commit to measuring and assessing the total richness of the resources we have at hand. We have as well, yet, to show you commitment to showing the appreciation we should have for the richness we have for our own cultures, and our own histories, and our own language that are with us still today. And I say that because I have some concerns about certain developments recently.

For instance, what does it mean when the native women of the Northwest Territories forgo looking into their own rich cultural, aboriginal history and language, and choose instead, in large numbers, to go with a colonial name of Northwest Territories. I challenge our youth, our women, to look at themselves and tell me and tell the rest of us in the North who they are. Later this afternoon, I will table a motion from the Sahtu Dene Metis Assembly, that this summer passed a motion support of retiring the name Northwest Territories and committing to working on a process to come up with a new name for a new Territory that will come into existence in 1999. Thank you.