NAN Deputy Grand Chief Goyce Kakegamic speech

I think we’re living in exciting times. A long time ago our ancestors lived off the land, fishing and trapping. That’s not feasible. But there’s other rich gifts that we have in our traditional lands. Minerals, waterways and forestry. And I think we know that we need the partnership to get the benefits for all people of northwestern Ontario. I think we need to open more dialogue with our neighbours, with the municipalities. What they want is exactly what we want for our children. Safe, healthy communities. I think we miss more opportunities sometime, we’re not as successful as we should be, by the continuation of native and non-native solitudes. We need to work together So I look forward to working on that agenda with my colleagues.
Education is a priority in our territory. The situation is not getting any better. They say our native people are failing. But it is not our native people that our failing.
It is the system that is failing our students. So we need to find ways how we can address this situation. How can we empower the educators throughout our territory with the adequate funding, resources and expertise to educate our children? And I believe that they can succeed, like anybody else.
In the urban society, you have school boards, you have all resources available to your people. Us, in our reserve, we don’t have that. We don’t have things like second-level services, specialists. Basically in some areas we just have schools. This is what we need to address to upgrade our students.
I think with all these developments, that we need to talk about resource sharing. We not only need to talk about the benefits on our lands, but we need to talk about how we can empower our children so in years to come they will have that capacity to look after themselves and their children. That’s the challenge we have.
I think we need to develop our students. We need plumbers, we need miners. Not everyone is destined to be a brain surgeon. We need to encourage our students like that too, more hands on, more reachable for the aspirations that they have.
I am thrilled to be working with the new executive. I was there for nine years, you get complacent and you leave for awhile and now you’re back with fire in your feet again. I’m looking at the new challenges that we have. But as I said before, we need to reach out to each other.
One of the greatest challenges that we have as we start this new millennium is understanding and tolerance. That’s what we need to reach out to each other.
There’s a lot of misconception, there is a lot of public education that needs to happen, about who we are and why are we taking the positions that we are. It’s dialogue, communicating.