Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I too would like to speak on Education Week, and more importantly, dealing with the education curriculum that we offer to our students in the Northwest Territories. Mr. Speaker, I think it’s important that we develop a curriculum that’s meaningful to our students’ education and gives them an opportunity to learn the bright history, and more importantly, the knowledge that has been held here for thousands of years from their ancestors, regardless if its treaty rights, land claim rights, or even preservation of our language and culture.

Mr. Speaker, the Beaufort-Delta Divisional Board of Education along with its partners, the Inuvialuit and the Gwich’in, have developed language curriculum which is now presently in place in the Beaufort-Delta. It provides an opportunity for Aboriginal students in the Beaufort/Mackenzie Delta to learn the language curriculum in the classroom developed by the communities that they come from, and more importantly, by the cultural groups in the region.

Again, Mr. Speaker, I think it’s important not only to educate our students but educate ourselves as Northerners, to understand the amazing history of the Northwest Territories and understand the area of Aboriginal rights, treaty rights, old treaties, modern day treaties, but more importantly, what does it mean by way of wildlife acts, the history of the trapping industry in the Northwest Territories and looking at the overall revolution of how we’ve evolved over the last 150 years from simply having trading posts to now large communities to urban centres and large rural communities that exist. In some cases in the history of the North, some of these communities that exist today well exceed 150 years. That’s an important part of our history that we have to not only preserve and protect, but pass on to our younger generation and develop that curriculum in our schools in the Northwest Territories so that our students can also understand the history of the North and where we come from and where we’re going.