Hand games have become a popular form of games in the communities, the traditional games. We as a department sponsor to some degree in association to hand games. We may not directly sponsor the hand game tournament.

As you know, I’ve been to a lot of hand games in the past and I guess one can see it as gambling, where money has been dispersed left and right. The perception is out there and we have to be careful as a Department of Education, Culture and Employment. We support the cultural preservation and what can we do to support that. If youth are getting involved with various hand game demonstrations, training that’s happening, we work with the school, because they receive funding as well pertaining to the cultural aspect. So this is an area that comes up.

Every time there’s a tournament they always ask for a donation across the Northwest Territories, and we’ve always referred them to the school boards because we provide funding to them. It’s just one of those things where they apply to all organizations hoping to get some money out of it, but as I stated, we have sponsored in some areas with respect to the hand game demonstrations, but this is an area that there’s been a lot of requests. We’ve been looking at this, how we can get around the system. But, Mr. Chair, we need to work with it and, again, I need to work with the organizations that we provide funding to. So we’ll continue to work with that. Mahsi.