Thank you, Madam Chair. Here is one other example of why this whole co-operative partnership type of approach we have adapted in the amalgamation is critical. First of all, traditional knowledge is not really ours, as a government, to scrape it together and put it on the weigh-scale and figure out how much it weighs and whether it is important or it can be discarded. It is not really ours to do that with. As a government, we have come into this country and we have done a lot of things that have absolutely no regard for the people that were here in the first place. There have been many times when people have suggested our policies in the whole range of different areas, not only the scientific, have been a joke and have no basis in reality. Because we have never been here, we have never really dealt with the realities of here, we were in no position to make judgement until it became self-evident, to do the contrary is not right. The Member is pointing at that. Traditional knowledge, what is there we know and we have to go on the basis that as a government, as a scientific people born elsewhere from a different culture and a different value system, we have to accept First Nations have a body of knowledge going across all sectors of existing knowledge. Some of it is measurable, some of it is not so measurable. Some are, while they are not measurable, self-evident and can be accepted for what it is. What we have been encouraging is asking people not to spend so much time on discarding the whole thing or on discarding the immediate things they think are sceptical, but to try to help us embrace the concept and to find some ways of preparing ourselves so we use it as we know it and to welcome the traditional knowledge holders to work in partnership with us, so we will decide together what is useful, what is relevant, and how it should be used. Thank you.
Stephen Kakfwi on Item 19: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
In the Legislative Assembly on February 26th, 1997. See this statement in context.
Item 19: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
Item 19: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
February 25th, 1997
Page 899
See context to find out what was said next.