This individual made accusations that the aboriginal traditional knowledge is not relevant nor their spiritual beliefs. Yet aboriginal people have been in the north for 10,000 or 20,000 years compared to Europeans who have come to North America in the last hundreds of years. I believe we are finally making a stride in recognizing traditional knowledge for what it is. It is knowledge which has been handed down for thousands and thousands of years by aboriginal people in one of the harshest climates in the world. For an employee of this government to make accusations that her religious beliefs are stronger than an aboriginal right to recognize their spirituality of surviving in the country long before there were Bibles, religions or things that we take as religious beliefs in the sense of the European market.

I would like to close by stating there have been hundreds, if not hundreds of millions of dollars spent in the scientific community on research regarding polar gas, the Mackenzie Valley pipeline, the Norman Wells pipeline, and the mining industry by scientists who fly up here during the summer season to do their tests in a month or two month period, fly south, go to a university and analyze it over the winter and they say that information is more powerful than people who have lived here and collected this information for thousands and thousands of years. I would like to ask the appropriate Minister a question on this particular subject. Thank you.