Mahsi cho, Madam Chair. [Translation] We, the elected leaders here sitting in here, the people that I represent, the real people that I represent, the way they’re looking at us. The need to do electoral boundary seats that they’re going to put in there can’t be done that way. The people here, the real people, there used to be a lot of people before and we used to reside all over the place, here in Yellowknife, also some people lived in Hay River, some of our people lived in Fort Smith, and we were separated all over the place. Some of us lived around the great lake. There wasn’t much work, so the Lutselk'e people and the people from Fort Resolution had to seek work outside of the community, and the people didn’t have the right kind of work we wanted. In here, at least, I have been pleading for people to get some monies for them so they can employ some of the people in the communities, and that’s the way it is in Lutselk'e and Fort Resolution. Everybody sitting here knows how it is in the small communities. The Fort Resolution and Lutselk'e, they are the real Chipewyan people. The people from Yellowknife speak Dogrib also. All the people that come together here in Yellowknife, even though they think they are from the Great Slave Lake area, they joined the people here in Yellowknife. The people that are residing here are saying our land is outside of our area even though our land is here, even though the people that were here before the Yellowknife existence, they were always here before. A long time ago they lived here, even before the real people, the first white man came up, we were still residing here. In case they think that we want to be placed with the Lutselk'e people, that’s not the way it is. We, the people in the Northwest Territories, were the original people here, the first residents of the Territories.

In here, if we have 19 seats here, it wouldn’t be the people that are going to be sitting here to replace us. It’s not good for the future. All the people that are sitting here should be all sitting in here, all of mixed races. The Dogrib people are sitting here, the Inuit people are sitting here and all the real people. We have the Slavey sitting here. This is the kind of place that it’s supposed to be. These 19 seats that they’re talking about, it’s going to

eliminate some of the people. Madam Speaker, Mahsi. [Translation ends]

[English translation not provided]

…people of Lutselk'e and Fort Resolution. In the way that we’re moving, and we’re trying to move to 19 seats to save a few hundred dollars, we are going to eliminate a nation of people in this House because someone thinks that two MLAs cost too much. It will cost too much if it’s at the expense of the Chipewyan people being represented in this House.

I went to a dinner at Christmastime and I didn’t even realize that they were not speaking English until I came home. When I told my spouse the story about what happened to me at a Christmas dinner in Lutselk'e, it was the only time I realized that no one was speaking English in there. If I couldn’t speak Chipewyan and if I couldn’t be a representative that spoke Chipewyan, I would have either been sitting there and have no idea what was being said or I wouldn’t have even been invited if I couldn’t speak the language. I spoke of that, how these elders sitting next to me were talking about people putting jam on their plates, cranberry sauce, so they spoke in Chipewyan. I grabbed the raspberry jam and handed it to her and she said, no, I prefer this one here. They took bannock and they spread the cranberry sauce on their bannock and ate. But that entire lunch that we had, I sat there with 26 elders in Lutselk'e; none of them spoke English.

When I go to Lutselk'e, nobody talks English to me. There are young people that speak to me, when I sit down in the band office, speak English, some of them. But, for the most part, I visit the elders. When I go for an election, I visit with the elders. I ask the elders to sign my nomination papers because they speak the language, they understand and they know what it’s like to be a Denesoline person or a Dene Tetlin person in Fort Resolution. I go around and I speak to the elders. An elder in Fort Resolution named Margaret, who went to residential school and can speak English but has difficulty with English, said to me, I learned how to speak English when I was nine years old. This is all in Chipewyan. She said it’s a beautiful thing to be able to sit here with a representative from the Legislative Assembly that can speak the language, because you know exactly what it is that we want. There’s no doubt in my mind when I speak to you in my language and you speak to me in my language that you understand 100 percent what it is that I have an issue with. When a Member comes in here and can’t speak my language, I don’t waste my time talking to them because everything’s always lost through interpretation.

I sit here and I say why in the world would we want to eliminate a language from the Legislative Assembly, and that’s what 19 seats does. Maybe

not the next election but eventually we will eliminate the Chipewyan language from this Legislative Assembly. That’s not right, and that’s why I will not support the 19 seats, and I would support what we need to do is the 21 seats. I also feel that it will go to 21 seats anyway, but somebody else is going to make that decision. Somebody else is going to say through the courts, the Friends of Democracy. Those guys are going to go to the courts and say you’re going to have to put more seats in Yellowknife, which I agree with. One more seat will go into Yellowknife and one more seat will probably go into Monfwi through the courts. That will leave only one seat under-represented and that will be the Sahtu, and eight years from now when we find out how the resource play, the oil play in the Sahtu is and see how that region expands, we’ll then have an opportunity to address that issue, but today, what we’re doing today and what we’re trying to do today going to 19 seats is eliminating the Chipewyan people from this Legislative Assembly. Thank you, Madam Chair.