Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I, too, will be supporting the motion. I am glad that we are addressing this issue. I have gone to residential school, but, more importantly, I think that the history of residential schools in the Northwest Territories goes back to the late 1800s. I was surprised to find that in Fort McPherson in 1898 there was a residential school. The only way I came across this information, I just happened to be in Ottawa, and I went to the Aboriginal Healing Foundation to meet a few people there to talk about the Tl'oondih healing centre. They had a map on

the wall that showed all the residential schools and the history of residential schools in the North. From then to where we are today, I think we have learned a lot, but we have devolved a lot to where we are today with program and service delivery.

If you talk to a lot of the elders in our communities, these people were taken away when they were five years old and they never came home until they were 10 or 12 years old, and they lost the connection to their own parents, and to their grandparents. They lost their language. They basically did not fit in. I think a lot of the emotional scars that we deal with today, with alcoholism and drug abuse and whatnot, you could trace it all the way back to the change in how we disrupted the family cycle and the family unit as aboriginal people, who have always depended on their grandparents and their parents; and they were closely connected to their relatives. I think from this experience, we have learned, through this process, to release a lot of these emotions that came with it, but, more importantly, to learn from what has happened. I think, as governments and as aboriginal people, we have to not reinvent the cycle of being taken away again. I hate to say this, but we're doing that today in regard to how people are being apprehended, how people are being institutionalized, and I think we have to get away from it.

I think, also, realizing that a lot of these people ended up in places such as Hay River, Fort Providence, Akaitcho Hall, Stringer Hall, Grollier Hall, Breynat Hall, Grandin College, and I think I was in almost all of those places, except Hay River and Breynat Hall and Stringer Hall and Akaitcho Hall. A lot of those were good times, but I think a lot of things have happened in those facilities that have given it a black eye. But I think for most people who went through it, it was a good learning experience.

Again, the thing that really gets to me, is having to grow up in a home where there were eight of us, and every year there were one or two people who kept going away, and the family kept getting smaller. At one point, there were only two of us left in the household, just me and my younger brother. I think that's something that always stands out in mind, to realize that we, as a family, were basically going through the same situation people went through back in the 1800s. I think we have to change that, and I'm glad Mr. Yakeleya brought this motion forward, but, more importantly, recognizing that we do have to deal with this issue and move on. With that, I would like to thank the Member for his motion, which I will be supporting.