 My name is Sylvie McAdam. I'm from the Big River Reserve, but it's called Atihumik Saigaihikhan. I am a fluent Cree speaker. I also write in Cree. I'm doing my final classes in law. So that's what I do, and I also work with different bands in Saskatchewan to begin re-implementing and reintegrating Cree laws back into their governance structure. And one of the biggest reserves that I'm working with right now is Big Island, but I'll be working with the File Hills Police Service to begin teaching the Cree laws to their members. So that's one of the stuff that I'm working on. Yeah. Well, unpacking and what you just said there, perhaps you can just speak about these laws in the way that how did you learn them and how they differ from the laws that we're up against when we do talk treaty with a non-indigenous person. Okay. I think for Indigenous people, you need to go back and speak to your elders in the community. You need to understand where it is that you come from. Who are your ancestors? How did our warriors and our women come to this place in time? How did our laws play a significant role at the time of treaty signing? So I'm very fortunate. My parents never went to residential school, never attended, so their knowledge is quite intact. And then when you look at my grandparents, my mother's parents never attended residential school, neither did their parents. So I'm very fortunate that knowledge is still being passed down. And in my father's family, there's sporadic where we could find people that went to residential school, but basically the knowledge is still intact. I could tell you my father's heritage, the lineage, right up before treaty signing. I could name because I've been taught that. And this is the same with my mother. Now, in saying that, when I was growing up and I was learning these things and my parents were telling me, you have to follow these laws. These are our laws. I took it for granted that other Kree people had that understanding. So when I started speaking about them in law school, people are like, what? And I'm like, yeah, we have our own laws. And they're like, really? So the first year of law school, I started to question things. I came out of there thinking, well, where are our laws? We didn't run around lawless. So I started talking to elders. And I've been so fortunate to speak to Leona Titusis, my parents, Francis and Juliet McCatham, and Jimmy Mayo, Alma and Simon Guy Toyhat. So they've really formed my thinking, especially my parents. They really formulated and I'm a good translator. I took their knowledge and I translated it into English. And what I came up with over the years is the laws translated into English. So those laws, I've been invited to speak at various conferences about these laws. Now, there is something happening. There is something happening around amongst indigenous nations. And I think there's an empowerment happening. I'm sorry. Do I go on? That's good, but you were giving me a thought. There is something happening. I do sense that. Actually, why don't you just keep going on with that idea? If there is something happening, how are those laws? How is that knowledge a part of that? How is that empowering? Okay. I'll expand a little more on, at the time of treaty signing, I'll tell you the history of how the laws came to be. The story behind this is, you know Wissachicac, the character of Wissachicac. Wissachicac was told by the creator to go to an area called Ogumawachi. Ogumawachi is in the Cyprus Hills area. And when he got there, he was told to climb those hills. And at the top of those hills, he sang four songs. And one of those songs is a woman's song. And when he was done singing those songs, the creator gave him the laws to take to the people to follow for all time. So when the Europeans came, they came with their laws. And then when the Cree leaders, Ogumawachi, went to meet with them, they had their laws to follow. And for example, there's two very significant laws. In Canadian law, they're called Actus Reyes. That's the similarity that I found. When you break a law, a human law, it's called Paastahun. Paastahun is the breaking of a Cree law against human beings. And this is the law that covers incest, adultery, murder, suicide. Those are all the different laws. And then there's the other law, it's the breaking of... It's called Otzinewin. It's the breaking of the creator's law against anything other than a human being. And that covers environment, hunting, earth laws, and the animal laws. And these things that human beings break in regards to the creator's creations. And in all this, in all of these laws, they're called Mantuingyuna, because that translates into creator laws. And then from the creator laws, they're called Uyesuna. These Uyesuna are the ones I just described, Paastahun and Otzinewin. Those are the human laws. And then amongst those Uyesuna are other laws. There's four elements that were given laws. That was the earth laws, the human laws, the spiritual laws, and the animal and the plant laws, all those things. So those are the things I started to learn about, and I started putting the translation from Cree to English. Now, at the time of treaty signing, there was different roles within the governance structure, the leadership. There was the hereditary chiefs, and what they were called at that time were Okitsutawskwok. They were roughly translated, they would be called clan mothers, but each tribe had them. And these clan mothers were the guardians or the keepers of these laws because they were the ones that raised the children. They were similar to judges. That's the closest that I could come up with in translation. Now, these Okitsutawskwok at the time of treaty signing didn't go and sit there, but when the day was done, the men, the chiefs of that day, would go back and go speak with these Okitsutawskwok. They did not have the authority or the permission to agree to anything unless they went back and spoke to these women. Usually, when the matters are not too serious, say if a child breaks a law, nine women would be called to deal with it and they would decide the appropriate remedy. And then after that's decided, then a consequence came with it. The community would decide what the remedy is and then there would be a consequence. And then in very serious matters, such as the time of treaty signing, there was nine women that were called upon because it was a very serious matter. This treaty signing was not, they did not go into it lightly. So when they used the nine women, it meant that it was very serious. And these two other women that were added to the seven were very knowledgeable and gifted. They were warrior women. They did not come into these matters very lightly and they were called upon because they were recognized for their knowledge and their gifts and the laws, their understanding of the laws. Now, so when that happened and the treaties were being negotiated and agreed to, these women were in a background and this is not something you read about in the history books. That's because at the time the Europeans were writing their version of it, but in the background over here were the women and this is the role that they had to play at the time of treaty signing. Now, today our biggest challenge is recognizing that this governance structure is not ours. It's an Indian act imposed system of governance. Our governance is under the treaties at the time of signing with the queen. We had Anogi Mao and his headman and they said, That was our system of governance and over here they had their system of governance as well. So we've left this behind over time and over history and these laws still sit with these individuals, with these governance structure over here and it's still there. It's not extinguished as the Canadian system of law would say. It's not extinguished. It still exists. So in saying that from my community, the elders have said there'll be a time in Cree, they say Kayas a long time ago and I've heard this while I was growing up. The elders said that the knowledge keepers and the keepers of the laws of these laws would awaken at a time when the Cree people, the indigenous people would need them. So the elders are thinking that now that time is coming, that time is slowly coming because the earth is being damaged. The laws are being awakened. But that's another topic. That's a whole learning process that someone needs to go on and appropriately access through the elders. Now, one of the things that I speak, you hear about people saying that the legal system doesn't work for us. It's true. It really doesn't work for us. The Canadian legal system, we have a high incarceration rate among indigenous people. And as soon as you can accept that the system doesn't work, I find when people accept that they can step back and say, okay, what did work? And that's what Big Island is doing, Big Island Cree Nation. They're stepping back and saying, well, what's going on in our community? How come it's not working? So they're addressing suicide and family issues and criminal matters by teaching their people about these laws, about the Cree laws and the Neheo laws. And so, you know, if you're going to go into the process of being a leader, you can follow the European system of law. But when you look at yourself, when you look at your heritage, you're always going to be an indigenous nation of this country, of this nation here. You'll always be indigenous in the eyes of your heritage, your ancestors, your relatives, your family. That's never going to change. So when I speak to young people about leadership and the structure of governance, and I hear people say, the treaties are broken. They're not broken. They're not. They're still there. We just haven't had the full impact of the treaties. You have to, I have to challenge people when they say, I'm a treaty person. Are you really? You know, we're all under the Indian Act. Is it, are we treaty people under the Indian Act, or are we treaty people under the treaties themselves? There's acts of treaty under the Indian Act, but we're not really under the umbrella of a treaty, because we stepped away from it through the Indian Act. Even the word, okimau is chief under the treaties. And if you look at it under the Indian Act, they're called okimahkan, that literally translates into a fake chief under the Indian Act. Now, I invite people to take a look at the Business Corporations Act, the Canadian Business Corporations Act, and look at the definition of municipality under there. The definition of municipality covers a reserve. So, the Canadian system looks upon our current chief and council as a municipality, like a mayor and council. This is what this act implies. That's what it infers. Now, if people are going to think about how they're going to view the future, the future of these laws, the future of the generations to come, and that's the process of the treaty signing. The treaty signing said that it's going to go on forever to the generations to come. So, how are you going to do that as a leader? Are you going to do it under the Canadian legal system, or are you going to follow the laws of the treaties? And in saying that, I speak to young people about the laws of suicide. I don't think our people really understand our Cree laws that govern suicide. When we speak of suicide, it's called kan baisut. It means literally it translates into to kill oneself. Now, with the elders and what I've learned speaking with them, they've said that when you break that law and you leave this world, you literally have to pay for it. When I say pay for it, it means to be punished or to suffer for it from the Creator because you've committed murder. That's the consequence for it. And that's the price that you pay when you commit suicide. Now, at the time of treaty signing, it was unheard of sexual abuse and incest and all these sexual related offenses that are so common now amongst a lot of people. There's no word in Cree for it. There's no word in Cree for rape and incest and all these sexual offenses. There's no word for it because it was unheard of. It was almost non-existent because these laws were the ones that guided the people. These were the laws that they followed. When I started learning about the European system of law, a lot of the history of the common law comes from many, many years of an evolution of a legal system that went through so many thousands of years of change. But when you really look further and further, their laws came from the Bible, from Moses and all these thou shall not steal, those kind of things. And our laws here were given to us from the Creator. And when we followed them, when our people had followed them at the time of treaty signing, those were the laws that spoke to how the families would raise their children. There's a law even on how to raise children. Of being a son, the law of raising children. And then there is the law of war, there's kinship, that's kinship, how you relate it to everybody. There's certain, even that's a whole process of how to teach your children who they're related to. Nobody ever speaks about that anymore. The elders that I speak to, they're really concerned about that because now we have first cousins having a relationship and that creates abnormal births. And that's what they're really concerned about. If you're not going to follow the kinship laws and you're breaking them, there's consequences. And of course, those consequences are abnormal births. And all the kinship laws govern the male and female lines. It's a complicated relationship recognizing how you relate it to each person and how you relate it to them is how you address them. Now, when you're going to play a role in the leadership, it's not just a male leadership line. There's also the female. Now, for example, my brother, his children would be related differently to me because of the female line versus my sister's children because my sister and I are of the female line. Her children would be like my children. I would be obligated, if anything happens, to my sister to raise her children. That would be my role versus my brother's children. They would be of the male line, so I would look at them differently, treat them differently. There's a certain respect for them that I must follow because they would be, in Cree, they would be translated like they were my son-in-laws, my daughter-in-laws. That's how it would translate. So I would have to address them in that manner and with real, a different respect. But if my brother and my other brother, they're again, that's the male line. That's the same with my father's brother. He would be my little dad. That's how it would translate. It would be a little dad, and he would be obligated a certain way to me because I would be his daughter and his children would be my brothers and my sisters. But I can't address my aunties the same way. They're like my mother-in-laws, so I have to have a certain deference and a different respect for them. I can't speak to them the same way. Now, a lot of our people don't know that in detail, so I've seen uncles address nieces that they're not supposed to address. I've seen very severe breaking of the kinship laws, and it causes such an imbalance and a sickness in the leadership, in the leadership role of the community. If you're going to begin a process of providing leadership and governance, then it's not about you as a human being. It's about looking at how you affect people. There's a law for respect, manatsuin, it's called. There is a law for that, and then there's a law for obedience and quietness, and there are so many laws in the culture with the nihil people that it's much stricter than any European system. It's so much more strict. You can't be using drugs and alcohol if you're going to step into the role of leadership. That is such a severe breaking of our laws that there's consequences that follow. And in saying that, oh, I wanted to say that when you look at the whole Canadian system of law, you're not going to get help, like financial help to get these Indigenous laws going. I know that there's communities struggling, but yet you'll get the Regina Correctional Center just got $51.5 million to build an extension to their center. Those are the challenges that people come up against. One of the biggest challenges is just accepting that there's no financial help to get these laws going or to get people to recognize them. It's about believing in them yourself. It's about putting them in your life. It's every day making a commitment to follow a standard of respect, following kinship, following the laws of how to raise your children, following the laws of not drinking and doing drugs and not even smoking. And it's a difficult process. I've had many challenges in my own life trying to follow these laws in my own life. It's difficult. You're tempted to have a cigarette or those different things that people do, especially for the young people. This is a challenge. Now, one of the things that I talk about to people is when, at the time of treaty signing, we had such a strong attachment to land. A lot of our laws are so connected to the land. Our medicines, our water and the animals and all these different things are so connected with us as human beings, as Indigenous people. Now, a lot of us have lost an attachment to land. We don't feel the harm being done to the land anymore because we don't follow these laws as much anymore. Nobody really speaks about them anymore. And just like any courtroom, you see these lawyers go into a courtroom, they bow, they follow procedure, there's rules in place. That's the same with Cree laws. If you're going to go seeking out these laws, you have to follow protocol and procedure. And Cree people, and I know that the Soto people and the Lakota and Lakota and the Denne, they all have this process. Something that a person said, I went to a conference in December at the College of Law and his name is Leroy Little Bear. He said, someone asked him, this was during the time when the election was going through the conservatives and the liberals. Leroy Little Bear said, people would go up and ask him, should I go and vote? And he would tell them, if you're for rights, go and vote. But if you're for sovereignty, then don't vote. So one of the processes that I tell people is, if we're going to exert sovereignty, if we're going to say we're a sovereign nation, we can't go to the table and say, here it is, this is how we're going to be sovereign by using their laws. It's kind of strange. You can't use their laws to claim sovereignty. They have to use your own laws. And these are the indigenous laws that I speak about. Now, the Indian Act was imposed. It was not done through consultation or consent. That's a well-known fact, of course. Now, if there are still people within every reserve in Canada that have a hereditary lineage, my suggestion is, and this hasn't happened, I don't know what would happen if people were to follow this suggestion that I've had elders tell me that the only way to go back to the treaties is, to go back to that hereditary line, to go back to that treaty chief. In our reserve, the lineage is the treaty people that first signed treaty. You've got to find those ones and find who was the last living treaty chief that existed. Now, the challenge for people is to let go of this system, this elected system and to go back to that system of a hereditary chief and headman. Can they do it? See, that's the challenge. There hasn't been one reserve that's done it in Canada. And are they able to do it? I don't know. It's a very challenging idea. Now, back then it was normal. A hundred years ago it was normal to have a hereditary chief. Today, with the Indian Act and the election system that many of us grew up under, it's strange. It's almost a strange concept which is unfortunate because that's where our treaties are. That's where our laws are. And that's where these, who gets it out of school, exist is under those treaties. So that's my suggestion. Now, the other thing that I wanted to tell you is at the time of treaty signing each reserve in Canada was surveyed. Now, this is in the Treaty 6 book. It says there, one square mile per family of five or more. That's how those reserves were surveyed. Now, if you look at my reserve, I'll keep using my reserve because I'm familiar with the landmass and everything. At the time of treaty signing it was 13 by 15. So it was surveyed like that, 13 by 15. And at the time when the treaty commissioner allocated the land, when the land was surveyed, they surveyed either by 13 families or 15 families given 13 by 15. Each family got one square mile per family of five. So when they signed the treaty, they were given their one square mile per family of five. So they all got their one square mile. And at the time the understanding was that they were going to start farming and living off the land in agriculture. That's another issue, the treaty right to agriculture. No one's really gone after that treaty right or applied it. The other thing I've heard elders talk about is the land is supposed to grow with the population. I heard that growing up all my life and I never really understood it. And elders kept saying, the land is supposed to grow with the population. Well, how is it supposed to grow? And then when I was in law school, the professors said, well, there's this one way that it could have grown. Since that family at the time of treaty signing got one square mile per family of five, that was their piece of land. They had ownership, if you will, over that one square mile. When their children grew up, when that family, their children grew up and married, those children would have had children. And when they had their family of five, they were supposed to be allocated their one square mile. And that land base was supposed to grow as the generations grew. So really, when you think about it, that one square mile of each reserve or squatters on that family's land, really, we're all living off of that land when really it's not ours. It was those people that signed at the time of treaty and it was supposed to grow from there. And that's one of the things that was pointed out to me. And that's another thing that would need to be brought out. And I'm not sure who could. It's almost like, well, I mean, it sounds like that they entered, and I say they is like, you know, the British and the Crown entered into the treaty thinking that we were going to be dead within a few years. Yeah, they did. They're growing land base and their risk-blowing forever type rights are kind of an unfortunate, for them that we dialed out. Sounds like a good plan. Yeah. I was curious with the idea of, because you mentioned treaty six, and it seems that, you know, with each nation's different laws and each nation's treaty signing, why is it that we share a lot of the rights that are in some of the treaty, like the idea of the medicine chest, you know, and that's something that everyone claims as a right when if the nations are sovereign from each other, why would that crossover, why would I have health care rights when there's no medicine chest in treaty four? Is that something else, sir? Well, from what the elders have told me and what they talked about, it was since we're all indigenous people, you know, you can't withhold one, since we all have the same indigenous laws and we ask for basically the same things at the time of treaty signing. And the other thing, if you look at the treaties as well, the government had agreed that the treaty people would basically have the same agreements. But there are little minor word differences here, here and there. Like in treaty four, they have the treaty right to ride a train for free. You know, I don't see it happening. You know, that treaty right is not extinguished. It's still there. So how come it's not happening? And yet that health, that clause for treaty six to health is applied. So there's these really big differences. Again, you have to go back to that governance structure that we left behind over here, because those under the Indian Act, there's those sporadics of acts of treaty. It looked like the government took little words here and there from the treaty book and tried to put it under the Indian Act and call it treaty. But when you look at the Indian Act, it's just an arm of the government. Now, in order to understand the Indian Act, you have to go back again to the history of it. In 1644, the Indian Act came into being because the government wanted alliance with the Indians as allies within the military. It was a part of the military structure. It was never under the government as a policy to assimilate or anything. It didn't start out that way. The Indian Act started out as an office in the military. It was supposed to be a governing document that's structured how to meet with the Indian allies under the military department. That's how it started out. It just evolved into a system of oppression because in 1812 and into 1820, you see these changes. It had a lot to do with the people that came into power. The changes reflected their values and the way that they looked upon Indian people. That's how the Indian Act evolved. The next thing you know, they were putting in place the past system and all these different things that caused a lot of oppression. That's where the residential schools came to be too. It didn't start out that way. The residential schools weren't treated as they were passed off. That's their education. They didn't say anywhere in the treaty that you'll go to jail if you don't let go of your children. They took the residential school concept from the United States from a man named Peter. I can't remember what his last name is, but he developed the concept of the residential schools. They took that from there and brought it here. I wrote so many papers in law school that I'm quite familiar with all of that. Interesting. You mentioned the training for free in treaty 4. When I was coming back from Ottawa, I wanted to take the chance of a challenge that I went down to the CM with my establishment. I was like, well, it's been reduced to a 15% student discount. It's still... I don't have the money. Let's see. Well, are there things that you want to... I can tell you based on your PowerPoint presentation because what we're looking for in terms of the bigger project that you're included in is the idea of treaty implementation and how do we do that present day? We spoke about living as sovereign people and it doesn't seem that a lot of people even understand what that means. You ask one person what self-governance means. It's completely different than self-government means to another person. How can... I'll look for a definitive answer for how we can do this, but in your view, and from what you've been learning from your elders and also from the Western education that you have, is there any real hope of legitimate treaty implementation from both parties? You know what? There's something called at the international level of law, there's something called comedy, and it's spelled C-O-M-I-T-Y. It's a concept at the international level that respects the other nation's laws. It's a friendly relations concept that I respect your international laws of your country and you respect mine. Now, that's not new. That's already recognized at the international level. It's just a matter of believing enough in ourselves as a sovereign nation to begin going back to that. Now, I really believe that someday there will be a hereditary chief and hereditary headman, and it's already been prophesized by many elders that that system of governance will be applied again. It will come back. I don't know what reserve or what nation will bring that process back, but it was foretold that they would, and it will be at the time in the South, which means the United States when a different-colored president came into power. I never knew what that meant, a different color. Now we have Barack Obama, and now the elders are saying, now during his time, this president's time, the hereditary chief and headman governance structure will find its way back into Canada, because that was the prophecy. I don't know when it'll happen or who, but I look forward to that. I'm excited that somebody would bring back that system of governance, because that is our inherent system of governance. It worked really well for our people. If we have no word for incest and all these sexual offenses, something must have worked. And people had such a profound respect for elders and children and all these different things. I'm not saying to go back to the teepee. I can't live without my computer. I can't, but it's the idea of how you live your life. It's the idea of following these laws every day in your life. It's when you get up in the morning and choose to be respectful to people and choose to follow the laws of how to raise your children, choose how to be respectful in a kinship manner to elders. Whenever I see elders that I know I'm related to a certain way, even if I'm not sure of my kinship with them, I'll make it clear with them. I'll ask them, how am I related to you? And they'll have no hesitation to tell me. There's Alma Gaituihat. She's my auntie. She's my mother-in-law auntie, so I call her Nsigwis. And I can tease her, certainly. I tell her, you know, where are your sons? You know, because I can tease her that way. She is my mother-in-law. And then my mother's sisters, if they were still alive, I would call them ngawis. It means little mother. They're my little mothers. That is the wonderful thing about being Indigenous people. We don't ever run out of family. There's always so many people that love and nurture an Indian child. That Indian child was never without family. Now, today, we have a hard time finding a family that will take in a foster child, even the label of foster child, you know? I've taken in children who have chosen to adopt me along the way in my life, and I prefer to call it kinship parenting, not foster parenting, because it just connotates such a negative label. And I think for many of us, we've lost that compassion, that kinship with our children. And we don't welcome them into our home anymore. We don't have that relationship with children anymore. And that's harmful to them. When we speak about these laws, when I speak about them, when the elders tell me about them, they speak about the ceremonies as well. Now, these ceremonies are where these laws are housed. That's where their home is. When you go to a sweat lodge or the Sundance Lodge or the Prairie Chicken Dance ceremony, all these different ceremonies that are indigenous to the different tribes, you go there and you listen and you see all these laws spoken about and they're applied even the way you approach an elder when you go to them with tobacco. That's a law. That's a tradition that you're following. That's been in existence for thousands of years as far as I know from what the elders have told me. You know, there's little things that have changed, I'm sure, but the majority of the time when you go to offer an elder tobacco, you're asking and accessing permission to learn about these laws, to be spoken to. And then these ceremonies, when I talked to the elders, they said that if we're going to find similarities, then it would be the courtrooms. Now, it's not exactly the same as courtrooms. Not the European concept of it, but the courtrooms in European context, that's where they do the judge and jury and they apply the laws, the remedy and the consequences. So the ceremonies are similar in that thought pattern, but when a person breaks a law, they're considered unhealthy, they're unwell, something is wrong, something needs to be corrected. So what I've translated is the ceremonies are the corrective force to correct that person. So, for example, if a young person was caught stealing food from a neighbouring tipi or a neighbouring person, they would be told, so you think that you're man enough to steal food, and you will learn to hunt. So they're taken by the warriors in that community and they're taken out to learn to hunt and to replace that food. There's something, a sickness within them that needs to be corrected if they're taking food and stealing food, then the community has a responsibility to correct that. I've heard of, I've learned about the sentencing circles. Now there's a whole process that's being missed before you get to the sentencing circles. That's the very end of it. This whole process here is being missed. You have to teach these children about these laws, what they've broken, what are the consequences. Then you go put them through the ceremonies and then in those ceremonies, the clan mothers decide which ceremony would be appropriate after they identify what law has been broken and the community speaks about it. Then they decide, this law has been broken, stealing, it's broken. So that law has been broken. So they go ahead and say, okay, so this child, this young person needs to go in fast. They need to do their vision quest or they need to go in and learn from another particular elder about the sweat lodge and the laws governing the sweat lodge. There's a remedy that's identified in that process. But if that young person or that individual doesn't learn and they keep breaking the law, every chance they get they break the law and they're not learning and they're not obeying and they're not listening to what they're taught, that's when the circle is used, the sentencing circle. That's when the community comes together and the extreme punishment is used. It's either death or banishment. That's when that circle is utilized. So for this circle to be utilized in this contemporary Canadian system, they've missed that whole journey here. They've missed that. And I've been a participant of these circles. They work, you know, but they don't apply the Indigenous laws and they certainly don't speak about the Indigenous laws. I haven't been to a circle where these laws speak about the laws of kinship, the laws of bringing up your children. You know, each person that sits at this circle has to be able to speak about these laws. The thing about the Indigenous laws is there are several people that have a role within the community of our nation. They have a role to play. And I mentioned the hereditary chiefs, the headmen, the Okitsitao School, Oskar Bilsack, and the women helpers. There's men and women helpers that have a very strong role because they're the ones that begin to be apprenticed and take on the other roles within the nation. We don't have that anymore as well. We do. There are sporadic people who are still utilizing it and they're still using it within their community. So our laws are still alive. They're still very much spoken about. And the elders that I talked to, they're just so sad that our young people are no longer speaking a language and how are we going to speak about these laws if we're not teaching our children the languages? It's easier maybe to follow the Canadian legal system of law, but you also have to recognize that it's not our system of law. Our law and governance and the things that we've been given to follow are still there. And I hope that someday that as a nation, as a sovereign nation, our young people in the future, the future leaders will begin to question why should we recognize the Canadian legal system as the process of leadership? It isn't. You go all over the world. China has a perfectly good system and they still honor their traditional structures and it's going well for them, I think. They're one of the up-and-coming nations and they still follow a lot of their traditions. And then there's Russia. All these different nations that have their own system of governance, Canadian law is not the all-be-all kind of law and governance. And there's wonderful work being done at the UN right now. There's the declaration of the Indigenous rights, the Indigenous people's rights. And in there it says the right to self-determination, the right to recognize their Indigenous laws. Now that's wonderful. That is such a wonderful empowerment for Indigenous people. It once again says Indigenous people had their laws. They're not gone. They're not going to disappear. Not as long as there's people like me going out there and just saying we have our laws, we have to follow them. We can't go to the government, federal government table and say, okay, we'll follow your laws and we'll still be sovereign people. How can that happen? It's like me going to Italy and taking their laws and coming to the table and saying that I'm a sovereign nation but I'm using Italy's laws. It doesn't work. And especially at the time of treaty signing, we had our laws. They were already there and we were using them at the time of treaty signing. It's just right now we don't have enough people who have that understanding. So I encourage the young people who may be listening to this conversation, this sharing to think critically about your history. Think about your heritage. Where do you come from? If an elder were to go up to you and ask you, who are your family, what is your lineage, are you able to answer it? If you don't have an understanding of the treaties, if you don't have an understanding of our laws, then you've lost that idea of sovereignty and leadership. Our leaders a long time ago at the time of treaty signing and a lot of the elders know this, they had a very strict system of leadership. It was filled with honor and truth and dignity and respect and a servitude for their people. It's been eroded over time. It's not gone. Those concepts are still there and those laws are still there. This is a matter of understanding them and believing in them and then bringing back into our way of governance, our way of leading ourselves to become going back to our sovereignty. And when you go back into that system of treaty, that idea of a hereditary chiefs and headmen, we never gave up our resources. There has to be plain and clear intent to extinguish. That's what the Canadian law says. There has to be clear and plain intent. Nowhere in the treaty does it say that we gave up our resources to land, to water, to the trees, the minerals. Nowhere in it does it say that. So whichever hereditary chief and headmen are prophesied to come back into this leadership structure are going to have powerful challenges ahead of them because they will have the authority with Okitsa Tauskog to access the challenge of bringing back those resources, the ownership to them.