Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Some time ago I sat down with an elder in Fort Good Hope and listened to the elder. One of the phrases I got from the elder, after listening to the elder, was “our land is holy.” I was trying to figure out what the elder was meaning.
Some time ago over the past several months, the Sahtu people have lost three dearly loved elders and a young mother and a young grandmother. These elders passed away some time ago, one last week and certainly the young mother from Deline, and they returned back to the land.
I recall when I was a young man in Tulita when the elder was talking to me, he knelt down and took the dirt from his hand and he said, “This is our blood.” I couldn’t understand what he was talking about, but now I can understand a little bit, I think, that our elders return back to the land. When our elders go back to the land, our land is holy.
In our small communities, especially in the Sahtu and other communities, we’re a family and family grieves together. So, back in our communities, I want to say to the families and all the volunteers, to help out the loved ones on the passing of their elders or their mother, grandmother. We need to support each other. The traditions that we had at one time were very strong, so now we need to remind ourselves and pray for each other.
Sometimes in this life we need to sit back and say, this is important, this can wait until tomorrow. I have a lot of issues for the Sahtu that I want to raise. That will happen tomorrow.
Today I want to pay respect to the elders, to the young mother and grandmother in Deline, Tulita and Fort Good Hope and say what they have done for us to be here, standing and talking freely is truly appreciated and I thank everybody in the Sahtu for helping these families through their hard times. I ask everybody to send prayers to the people in the Northwest Territories who also lost family members or friends since our last coming to this session. Mahsi.