Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, there is one thing that binds the people of the Sahtu more strongly than the land and the culture and it is the caribou. Mr. Speaker, our region has over 70 licensed tourism establishments, including outfitters, outpost camps, catering to the outdoor tourists as well as big game outfitters and sports fishermen. They are welcome to our region, Mr. Speaker, but they need to respect the land they operate. It is our land and not theirs. I talked about some of the stories. I talked to one young guide who worked in the Mackenzie Mountains. I asked him, do you guys shoot sheep? He said yes. Do you guys skin the sheep also for the people? He said yes. I said how do you skin the sheep? He was telling me. I said, don't you know the traditional knowledge and what our people have been telling is that when you shoot a sheep, you cannot skin it where you shot it. You have to pack it a mile or two away, then you have to skin it. But there is a certain way you have to skin this animal because it is a precious animal to us. It is a gift to us. So traditional laws like that, we are losing them fast in the mountains.
Mr. Speaker, that meat from the various animals we shoot in the mountains gets distributed to people in the Sahtu communities and older people that want this meat. The delicacy sometimes is not brought into the communities. Some of the meat is sometimes not distributed fast enough. It is old. Sometimes the meat is full of sand on it. Sometimes the meat is spoiled. People sometimes don't understand why this is happening, that people in the North in my country here are wondering why certain parts of their skills are not being used by the outfitters. Mr. Speaker, Mr. Pokiak from Nunakput talked about our land here in terms of our land claim agreements, in terms of an agreement that should be respected. I, for one, support the Sahtu Renewable Resources Board in terms of their decision on this issue here with caribou.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to say that one day I hope we will see our free-roaming caribou and that we don't have to walk into a Legislative Assembly and see an animal in our foyer that is stuffed and that is the only thing that we can see and are the results of our caribou in the future. Thank you.
---Applause