Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, on Wednesday, February 18th , I said

some things in the heat of things in terms of the board reform. I have been thinking now for a couple of days about my words that came out in this discussion.

Last night I was with my children at home and was thinking about words that my mother taught me. Especially my grandmother, she always said to strive to work better with other people. Not too long

ago, some of the elders in the Sahtu told me to think about what I am going to say and how I am going to say it because words in the olden days were very powerful. They had a strong message and they could help you or they could hurt you in terms of what you want to do with your life or your people.

So I was thinking about this last night, Mr. Speaker, about the last couple of days here and I remember having some discussions. I want to say, for the record, Mr. Speaker, and I want to say it very sincerely, that I have said some things to Minister Miltenberger in terms of his style. I said something personally to him saying he acted like a dictator in a heated initiative that was happening in the Northwest Territories. I thought about this for a bit and I don’t feel very good about saying that very publicly, because I wanted to say that this is not what my elders have taught me. Sometimes you have to eat your words.

So I want to say that to Mr. Miltenberger himself, and his family, that I do wish to take back those words and say I want to work in cooperation on certain issues and that sometimes words slip out and sometimes you want to take them back. But sometimes it’s very hard. So I want to say that in terms of the teachings of my elders that I’m taking responsibility for looking at where we can work together on this initiative.

These are not the sentiments of the Sahtu people to name call people…