Thank you, Mr. Speaker. National Day of Truth and Reconciliation is tomorrow, and I'd like to just thank all the communities in my riding and across the territory that's taking part in showing, having remembrance of it. The opportunity and encourage all residents of the Northwest Territories to spend time with their family and friends, to take the time to appreciate each other, get out on the land and talk to elders; most importantly listen to those who want to speak. I'm very proud of my Inuvialuit heritage, my culture. And I'm a residential school survivor and so many of my brothers and my grandfather and my mother that went through this, and we all were traumatized in one way or another, the effects that it had on our family. But we're still standing.
You know, being a part of a community and watching our young people now hunt, fish, explore that don't have to go through this, that what we've been through, I think it's a really we're really blessed to be where we're at and where we're from. You know, our leaders, as members of our community, we need to encourage this particularly within our youth, to keep forcing them that school's the most important thing and helping them, encouraging, encouraging everybody.
Mr. Speaker, I know the impacts of the residential school system. I know the challenges faced by Indigenous peoples throughout Canada, especially in the North. I always like to say, you know, Mr. Speaker, honour the past, live the present, and create the future. I know the challenges we faced, and reconciliation means that we could work together now, everybody's on the same page, and now we could just work together and move up and not look back. But it's pretty tough to do. That's why this day and this weekend is so important. It's a reminder of what we should always be thinking and doing, a reminder of the importance of culture, family. It is a reminder of difficult path of Indigenous peoples that we faced and also a reminder that here today we work for the better and brighter future.
Mr. Speaker, I want to wish everyone in Nunakput and across the country a meaningful weekend, to take the time for each other and reflect. You know, I always reflect because you, Mr. Speaker, are a residential school survivor. We have other Members in the House that are other residential school survivors. But when we see our brothers and sisters that we lived with for three or four years at a time, it's like you never skipped a beat. And today, you know, I reflect on a couple of my friend's I've lost. Clifford Takazo from Deline, one of my good friends. He was crazy, and I loved him. He was an awesome guy. And one of my good friends that I lost in the 1990s when we first arrived residential schools, my good friend Raymond Bernard, he passed away at Christmastime. But it's things like that you think about on these kinds of days and reflect. And, you know, we're blessed we're still standing, and we just want to make a brighter future for our youth and our communities that we represent. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member for Nunakput. Members' statements. Member for Deh Cho.
