Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Treaty 11 has been around for some 90 years, since it was signed in the summer of 1921. Mr. Speaker, the reason for the land claim settlement was because of the discovery of oil in and around Norman Wells. In order for the government to allow industry or people to move into the Northwest Territories and obtain the right to that oil, they had to have a treaty signed with the First Nations people in the Mackenzie Valley, which included the Treaty 11 area that went all the way to the Beaufort Sea.
Mr. Speaker, the whole reason for treaties some 90 years ago was to open up the North to allow a legal transfer to take place between the indigenous people of the Northwest Territories, the Government of Canada and the Dominion of Canada to allow for that to take place.
That is no different than what we’re talking about here in regard to devolution between the Government of the Northwest Territories taking powers from the federal government and imposing that right over indigenous people in the Mackenzie Valley like they did some 90 years ago. But since then, Mr. Speaker, the people in the Northwest Territories, the Dene and Metis people, have woken up to the reality that they have rights that have not been implemented under their treaties, especially in the area of lands and resources and the management of those lands and resources in the Mackenzie Valley, and that’s what we call the modern day treaties.
In those modern day treaties it’s pretty clear that they have the right to lands and resources, not only ownership rights but the rights to royalties and any revenues that flow from those additional Crown lands outside the lands they already own.
Mr. Speaker, the federal government and the Government of the Northwest Territories has treaty, Constitution and land claims obligations that are entrenched in Section 35 of the Canadian Constitution. What’s happening here in the Northwest Territories, Mr. Speaker, is pathetic. We are leaving out one of the largest landowners in the Northwest Territories from a fundamental process, by exclusion, by ignoring them and not taking them seriously and allowing them due process, hearing them out, giving them the resources so that they can have the meetings they need to discuss the issues that are before them. Because they make waves, they’re pushed off the table and they’ll sign with anybody that’s on our side and agrees to everything that we’re telling them, but not deal with the people who are impacted by this decision.
At the appropriate time I will have questions to the Premier on why the Dene people have been excluded from this process.
