LaFontaine-Baldwin Symposium 2002 Lecture

Mr. Georges Erasmus The Fairmont Hotel Vancouver, BC March 8, 2002 6:30pm Printable View (pdf) Introduction I am honoured by the invitation to contribute to the Lafontaine-Baldwin lecture series, imagining the kind of Canada we want in the 21st century. And I welcome the opportunity to reflect with you on the issues that we need to address in order to realize that vision. To paint a picture of the Canada that Aboriginal people envision I need only turn to the ideals of a good life embedded in Aboriginal languages and traditional teachings. The Anishinabek seek the spiritual gift of "pimatziwin" – long life and wellbeing which enable a person to gain wisdom. The Cree of the northern prairies value "miyowicehtowin" – having good relations. The Iroquois Great Law sets out rules for maintaining peace "Skennen kowa" between peoples, going beyond resolving conflicts to actively care for each other’s welfare. Aboriginal peoples across Canada and around the world speak of their relationship with the natural world and the responsibility of human beings to maintain balance in the natural order. Rituals in which we give something back in return for the gifts that we receive from Mother Earth reinforce that sense of responsibility. I would guess that most Canadians subscribe to these same goals: long life, health and wisdom for self and family; a harmonious and cohesive society; peace between peoples of different origins and territories; and a sustainable relationship with the natural environment. Canadians would probably also agree in principle with the traditional Aboriginal ethic that our actions today should not jeopardize the health, peace and well-being of generations yet unborn. If there is such a convergence of basic values between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples, why is communication between us so difficult, so riddled with misunderstandings and tension? There is a problem of language. A study done for the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples examined over two hundred commission and task force reports issued between 1966 and 1991. The researchers pointed out that even when we used the same words, Aboriginal people and government representatives were often talking about different things. The research also traced remarkable consistency in the issues and positions that Aboriginal people were articulating over those twenty-five years. I will return again to the issue of historical continuity in Aboriginal peoples’ priorities. I first want to focus on the nature of discourse between our cultures. By discourse I mean the way we carry on conversations.

Video Clips from the 2002 Lecture These clips use RealPlayer The Speech Part 1 56 K 100 K 300 K Part 2 56 K 100 K 300 K Part 3 56 K 100 K 300 K Georges Erasmus President and Chairman Aboriginal Healing Foundation The Debate 56 K 100 K 300 K Carole Taylor Chair Canadian Broadcasting Corporation 56 K 100 K 300 K His Excellency John Ralston Saul Conclusion 56 K 100 K 300 K Georges Erasmus

Inter-cultural discourse is carried on predominantly in English or French. Since this requires translation of concepts and experience, there is the normal problem of finding words in a second language that approximate the meaning we want to convey. But beyond that, the discourse has been framed in terms that are often fundamentally alien to the way we think about an issue. Take "land claims" for example. Elders in our nations find it strange that younger leaders launch "claims" to lands that have supported our peoples since time immemorial. "Comprehensive and specific claims" are the terms around which the Government of Canada is prepared to engage in legalistic dialogue. Aboriginal people have had to work with the prescribed terms in order to get land questions on the policy agenda, even though the language distorts our reality. The discourse is driven by an imbalance in power, and considerations of strategy. In other areas as well - governance, health, education - Aboriginal people have been required to adopt language that is not quite our own.

I want to take most of this hour to suggest how dialogue with Aboriginal people might be framed in different terms, looking for language that expresses Aboriginal perspectives and also connects with the aspirations of a wide spectrum of Canadians.

Creating and sustaining a national community is an ongoing act of imagination, fuelled by stories of who we are. The narratives of how Canada came to be are only now beginning to acknowledge the fundamental contributions that Aboriginal people have made to the formation of Canada as we know it. We were major participants in the trade and commerce that supported settlement. We were partners in the treaty-making that opened access to lands and resources. We were in the front lines protecting Canadian borders in 1812-14. And we volunteered in extraordinary numbers in World War I and World War II to defend democratic values overseas. We are convinced that we also bring something of value as Aboriginal peoples to meeting the political and economic challenges that Canada faces in this new century.

If that contribution is to be fully realized, we need to engage in conversations that go beyond policy debates with governments. We need to talk "people to people" as well as "nation to nation".

I propose to try shifting the terms of discourse along three lines: from Aboriginal rights to relationship between peoples; from crying needs to vigorous capacity; from individual citizenship to nations within the nation state.

Aboriginal Rights: Relationship Between Peoples

Aboriginal rights seriously entered the vocabulary of Canadian law and public policy in 1973, when a Supreme Court judgement acknowledged that the Nisga’a of British Columbia had Aboriginal title to their traditional lands, based on their use and occupancy of those lands from time immemorial. The Nisga’a had never entered into treaties with the British colonial government or Canada. Members of the Court were divided on whether enactments of federal and provincial law had extinguished Nisga’a title. Resolution of the Nisga’a land question would not be achieved until the signing of a treaty in1998.

Aboriginal and treaty rights gained protection in the Canadian Constitution of 1982 with the provision that "The existing aboriginal and treaty rights of the aboriginal peoples of Canada are hereby recognized and affirmed". A series of Supreme court decisions has given some definition of how these rights are to be interpreted under Canadian law, but there has never been a negotiated agreement between Aboriginal nations and Canada on the nature of these rights. Each court decision addresses a portion of the larger issue, raising a host of new questions. The Marshall decision of 1999 affirming Mi’kmaq rights under a 1760 treaty to earn a moderate living from the Atlantic fishery did not put an end to disputes about how resources are to be shared.

Gaining recognition of Aboriginal rights in the courts and entrenchment in the Constitution have been critical to restoring Aboriginal peoples as active agents in directing our collective lives. Where land claims settlements have proceeded, they have opened possibilities for social, cultural, political and economic renewal. But there have been some unfortunate side effects of the rights agenda. An American Indian law professor has written that "Like other minority groups in our society, tribal Indians must demonstrate a convergence of their interests with dominant group interests in promoting their rights." This is difficult because "the rights they claim seem so alien and opposed to the dominant society’s legal, political, and cultural traditions".

Aboriginal rights have been delineated in the context of long, contentious court cases in which Aboriginal interests have been pitted against Canadian state parties who are purportedly representing the public interest. Legal scholars and constitutional experts, standing within the Canadian legal system, interpret what Aboriginal people want and what obligations rest with Canadian governments to accede to those claims.

Litigation is no way to build a community! It is not the way preferred by Aboriginal peoples. We have a history of treaty-making that stretches back long before Columbus. Drawing on those traditions, through two centuries of expanding settlement, the Mi’kmaq, Mohawk, Ojibwa, Saulteaux, Cree, Dene and other Aboriginal nations sat down in councils and entered treaty negotiations to discuss how to establish good relations with newcomers. This is how Canada came to be a "peaceable kingdom", not one born of violence and conquest. A non-Aboriginal scholar working with the Royal Commission, who had spent years of his life researching treaty history, declared: "These are my treaties too. They legitimize my place in this land."

Aboriginal treaties are often described in legal terms as creating a trust relationship, one that invests the trustee with superior power and greater ethical responsibilities. For Aboriginal people, treaties created a relationship of mutual trust which was sacred and enduring. The bond created was like that of brothers who might have different gifts and follow different paths, but who could be counted on to render assistance to one other in times of need.

Renewing the relationship between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples in Canada is the major theme of the 1996 Report of The Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. The RCAP Report presented a comprehensive set of recommendations to restore a relationship of mutual trust, starting with an acknowledgment of historic wrongs, a ceremonial commitment to renewing the relationship and the establishment of laws and institutions to ensure that commitments would be acted upon.

It is now more than five years since RCAP reported to the Prime Minister and the people of Canada. There is a consensus among Aboriginal people, scholars and activists, that little has changed in the interim. Underlying tensions over lands and treaty rights continue to boil up into open conflict. Litigation on residential schools wends its slow and tortuous way through the courts, bringing satisfaction and closure to no one. The federal Minister of Indian Affairs has unilaterally announced a timetable for consultations and revisions to the Indian Act without regard to the advice of RCAP that Aboriginal consent is essential to a renewed relationship.

In the months following the armed confrontation between Mohawks and Canadian authority at Oka there was an urgent and audible demand from the Canadian public to repair the relationship that had gone visibly wrong. In the decade since Oka that sense of urgency appears to have subsided. Polling data indicate that there is still public support for spending to resolve social problems and, to a lesser degree, support for self-government and cultural survival of Aboriginal peoples. The framing of the questions solicits answers that reinforce a sense of distance and reluctant obligation. Aboriginal people, guided by their traditions, would pose other questions: In this situation, how can we establish good relations? In the circle of our relations, how do we maintain harmony and well-being?

We have not found a way to ignite the imagination of contemporary Canadians with the possibilities represented in Kaswentah, the wampum belt recording 18^th century treaties between the Iroquois and the colonists that has struck a responsive chord with other Aboriginal nations. The Kaswentah shows the wake of two vessels, a First Nations canoe and a European sailing ship, travelling together on the river of life. The peoples represented retain their own identity and autonomy, but they are linked to one another by principles of truth, respect and friendship. The two-row wampum belt is often read as symbol of separateness. In fact it symbolizes a strong, ethical relationship between peoples.

Perhaps one of the impediments to mutual relationship envisioned by Aboriginal peoples is the notion we are an exceptionally needy population.

The picture of needs blocks out a perception of Aboriginal capacity. I suspect that media images of gas-sniffing youth in Davis Inlet are etched in the memories of most adult Canadians. There are other Aboriginal communities where substance abuse and clusters of suicide and suicidal behaviour are of crisis proportions. But there is also evidence from many quarters that Aboriginal people are in the midst of a remarkable resurgence - in education, healing and community wellness, the arts, and economic activity.

Considering the primary importance of children in Aboriginal cultures it is not surprising that education was one of the first sectors where Aboriginal nations and communities moved to re-assert control of their lives. Many schools in First Nations communities are now administered locally, and where possible they incorporate Aboriginal languages and cultural content in the curriculum. More youth are staying in school to complete a high school diploma, though a gap still exists between graduation rates of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal young people. Post-secondary enrolments of registered Indian students have held steady at around 22,500 nationally for the past five years. The most remarkable fact about this group of students is that the largest proportion of them (42%) is over thirty years of age. The pattern is that Aboriginal students leave school as youth and return as adults, often with family responsibilities, to complete academic and vocational credentials.

Re-entry into post-secondary education has become more attractive with the introduction of Native Studies and Aboriginal-specific programs in colleges and universities across the country. Aboriginal faculty are establishing a growing presence as role models, mentors and instructors. Aboriginal colleges and institutes have also become major players in post-secondary education. A few, like Saskatchewan Indian Federated College and the Nicola Valley Institute of Technology in British Columbia offer provincially recognized diploma and degree programs. Most of the 43 Aboriginal institutes across Canada have partnership arrangements with accredited provincial colleges and universities. The Institutes, under Aboriginal control, are helping to narrow the gap in educational attainment by developing and delivering community-based, culturally relevant programs, serving adult students as well as youth.

Aboriginal initiatives in healing and wellness, like those in education, are showing high levels of effectiveness. Research is confirming that Aboriginal services are also cost-efficient. Community Holistic Circle Healing was initiated in Hollow Water, Manitoba in response to alarming incidents of sexual abuse, including abuse of children. Berma Bushie, one of the key participants in the strategy described the situation facing the community in 1987: "The child welfare and legal system were at our door. The community had no involvement. Offenders were sent to jail where they had to deny their offense to survive, and two or three years later they were turned back into the community to offend again."

The 13-step program of intervention pioneered at Hollow Water engages the whole community, along with victims of abuse, offenders and their families, in assuming responsibility for restoring safety, health and balance.

In 2001 the ministry of the Solicitor General for Canada and the Aboriginal Healing Foundation sponsored a cost-benefit analysis of ten years’ experience with Community Holistic Circle Healing. Over a ten-year period federal and provincial ministries contributed 2.4 million dollars to the project. A total of 107 offenders who acknowledged their offenses had been dealt with. The research calculated that for each 2 dollars of investment by federal and provincial ministries the return was between 6 and 16 dollars in services rendered in lieu of pre-incarceration, prison, probation and parole. These figures reflect the efficiencies achieved through community-led services that would otherwise have been provided by government agencies. The analysis does not take into account that the rate of re-offending over the 10-year period was less than 2% for offenders in Circle Healing, while estimated rates of recidivism are 13% for sex offenses and 36% for other offenses. Neither does this very conservative cost analysis include benefits to the community that include improvements reported in child health, better parenting skills, increased safety and community responsibility overall. As a footnote, although residential school experience and its inter-generational effects are significantly implicated in the offenses treated by Circle Healing, not one legal action had been filed by a Hollow Water community member as a result of residential school abuse.

Evidence is accumulating that Aboriginal organizations are very effective in mobilizing human resources to meet challenges. The Aboriginal Healing Foundation was established in 1998 to distribute $350 million allocated by the federal government to address the effects of physical and sexual abuse in residential schools. Many Aboriginal people who attended residential schools, or whose parents attended residential schools, experience post-traumatic stress, suicide attempts and life-threatening addictions among other expressions of need. The Foundation has committed and distributed $156 million to community-based healing in the form of 800 grants. In June 2001 an interim evaluation surveyed just over 300 of the projects funded to date. The survey found that:1,686 communities and communities of interest were being served; just under 59,000 Aboriginal people were engaged in healing projects, less than 1% of whom had been involved in healing previously; and almost 11,000 Aboriginal people were receiving training as a result of funded projects. In an average month 13,000 hours of volunteer service in the community are logged. Program investments are having a multiplier effect unheard of in government services. .

Right across Canada alternative justice projects, healing circles and Aboriginal agencies are reaching out and drawing angry, alienated, despairing individuals back into the circle of community, where they discover their worth as human beings, recognize their relations and begin to make their unique contribution to community well-being.

Aboriginal arts and artists are playing an important part in the revitalization of the Aboriginal community. They are also making their mark in society at large. Aboriginal superstars have been around for a long time: Buffy Saint-Marie and her presence at Academy Awards and on Sesame Street; Bill Reid bringing Haida art forms to national prominence; Douglas Cardinal as the architect of the Museum of Civilization. We now have another generation of artists and writers giving expression to their Aboriginal identity and experience with eloquence and humour: Eden Robinson, a Haisla author, was nominated last year for both the Giller Prize and the Governor General’s Award for literature, for her first novel Monkey Beach; Tomson Highway has received international recognition as an author and playwright; Drew Hayden Taylor writes television scripts as well as plays and humorous columns. When Aboriginal people, especially youth, see Susan Aglukark on the music charts and Graham Greene in the movies, the range of scripts for their own lives is expanded. It was cause for celebration in February this year when an Inuit film Atanarjuat (The Fast runner) swept the Genie Awards winning a total of six categories, including best picture, best direction and best screenplay.

The Aboriginal Peoples’ Television Network which began broadcasting in 1999 represents a huge step forward in Aboriginal arts and communications. APTN grew out of regional Aboriginal broadcasting initiatives, particularly the Inuit Broadcasting Corporation and Northern Native Broadcasting Network. It provides multiples lenses through which Aboriginal people can see the world and themselves and through which the public at large can view public affairs, community activities and cultural programming through Aboriginal eyes. APTN’s influence is being extended as it partners with other agencies to produce and distribute a variety of programs which in turn are broadcast on regional outlets.

I have mentioned that land claims settlements have opened economic opportunities for some Aboriginal communities. Development projects funded through government programs or private sector partnerships are having an impact on others. I want to highlight the activity of Aboriginal entrepreneurs as another expression of Aboriginal capacity.

A 1996 survey by Statistics Canada identified over 20,000 Aboriginal-owned businesses. This represents a three-fold increase between 1981 and 1996 . 46% of these businesses have at least one additional full-time permanent employee. The numbers of Aboriginal women and Metis owners are showing the fastest growth. Businesses are concentrated in primary sectors of fishing, trapping and farming, along with contracting trades, but Aboriginal owners are represented in a wide variety of enterprises including: management consulting, software design, manufacturing and tourism. These figures on entrepreneurship do not include community-owned businesses that typically operate on a larger scale and set goals to promote training, employment and community economic development along with profit-making. Meadow Lake Tribal Council Forest Industries is a highly successful enterprise in the resource sector. Air Creebec and First Air, started with capital from claims settlements, are thriving in the highly competitive airline industry.

Despite the resurgence in Aboriginal capacity in the past thirty years, the gap between Aboriginal and general Canadian life opportunities remains disturbingly wide. While Canada regularly ranks first on the United Nations index for quality of life, registered Indians living on-reserve would rank 63^rd and registered Indians on and off-reserve would rank 47^th applying the UN criteria of education, income and life expectancy. Aboriginal youth are especially vulnerable. They are less likely than mature adults to have attained academic and vocational credentials and they are hit hardest by unemployment. Moving from a reserve or rural settlement to the city improves income and employment prospects, but only marginally.

Strategies for building on Aboriginal capacity have been set out in the RCAP Report and in subsequent forums. They include: supporting community-led initiatives that mobilize Aboriginal people in diverse situations to deal with their own issues; creating space for Aboriginal institutions that provide sustained, effective leadership in accord with the culture of the community; promoting partnerships and collaboration between Aboriginal people, the private sector and public institutions to break down isolation and barriers to productive relationships; and recognizing the authority of Aboriginal nations to negotiate the continuing place of Aboriginal peoples in Canadian society, whether on their traditional lands or in the city.

For most of the years since the first Indian Act was passed in 1876 being Aboriginal or "Indian" was perceived to be incompatible with being a Canadian citizen. When the option of enfranchisement, trading Indian status for voting rights, failed to attract individuals, more coercive measures were enacted, enfranchising Indians if they lived away from their reserves, joined the military, obtained higher education, or, in the case of women, if they married a non-Indian. The object of policy, baldly stated in 1920 by Duncan Campbell Scott, Superintendent of Indian Affairs, was "to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic and there is no Indian question and no Indian Department". The same object was reflected in the 1969 White Paper which proposed, in the language of democracy, to make Indians "citizens like any other". The response of Aboriginal peoples to all these attempts to "break them into pieces" has been consistent resistance. Aboriginal proposals for a nation-to-nation relationship have proven problematic in attempted dialogue with governments and with Canadians at large. I want to spend a few minutes re-framing the discourse on nation identities.

My first point is that Aboriginal peoples have maintained our identities as nations since time immemorial. As nations we made treaties with one another, with European emissaries and the Crown in right of Canada. As nations we have successfully asserted our rights before Canadian courts to enjoy benefits from our traditional lands. In negotiations leading to the failed Charlottetown Accord on the Constitution we won reluctant acknowledgment from Canadian governments that Aboriginal self-government is an inherent right, not a privilege granted by other authority.

It seems to us that the continuing existence of Aboriginal nations is a political and legal reality as well as an historical fact. How that reality is accommodated in relations with the Canadian state and Canadian people is a matter for negotiation. I would simply say to you that we can’t begin a dialogue on building a future together if the conversation starts with a unilateral declaration "You are not who you say you are!"

My second point is that most of the thorny issues raised as impediments to nation-to-nation relations have been confronted and resolved in the treaty concluded in 1998 by the Nisga’a Nation, Canada and British Columbia. The treaty secures to the Nisga’a control of a portion of their traditional territory and a share of natural resources in other areas. It frees up vast areas of Nisga’a homelands for use and development by Canada, British Columbia and commercial interests. The treaty deals with Nisga’a legislative powers, government-to-government fiscal transfers, and taxation.

I’m not proposing that the Nisga’a treaty should be a template for nation-to-nation relations, but it does provide an example of how a practical agreement can be put in place without undermining the integrity of the Canadian federation.

My final point on nation-to-nation relations points to the practical benefits to Aboriginal people and Canada of recognizing and accommodating the authority of Aboriginal nations. Stable Aboriginal governments with recognized jurisdiction, resources to implement decisions, and legitimacy in the eyes of citizens can achieve social and economic renewal more effectively than federal and provincial governments have been able to do. The evidence is in.

The Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development reported in 1992 on research in fifty projects over a five-year period. The project attempted to determine why economic ventures is some tribes succeed and others fail. The findings, confirmed in subsequent studies, were that effective governance is a critical factor in fostering economic development. The characteristics of effective government were identified as: 1) having power to make decisions about their own future; 2) exercising power through effective institutions; and 3) choosing economic policies and projects that fit with values and priorities, that is, the culture of the community.

The findings on economic development in American Indian tribes are mirrored in a World Bank study of 1998 that found a negative correlation between foreign aid and growth. The study raised doubts about the assumption that injections of capital from abroad would be the main way of achieving significant social and economic benefits in developing countries. Having effective government institutions at the community level, that support sound economic policies and inclusive social policy is far more influential than previously understood.

Recognizing nations and establishing institutions to implement the inherent right of self-government are important but they are not sufficient to enable Aboriginal people to thrive in Canada. The Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples pointed out that political gains will be hollow without the economic means to sustain them. The economic base for many Aboriginal nations is to be found in the potential for wealth standing on, lying under, or flowing through their traditional territories.

The United Nations Human Rights Committee took up the theme of lands and resources in its 1999 review of Canada’s compliance with the UN Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The Committee challenged Canada in these words:

With reference to the conclusion by RCAP that without a greater share of lands and resources institutions of aboriginal self-government will fail, the Committee emphasizes that the right to self-determination requires, inter alia, that all peoples must be able to freely dispose of their natural wealth and resources and that they may not be deprived of their own means of subsistence. The Committee recommends that decisive and urgent action be taken towards the full implementation of the RCAP recommendations on land and resource allocation.

As I was in the final stages of preparing this talk I was anticipating the questions that might be stimulated by this vision of building a common future. Can we get there from here? What are the costs? Is it in the public interest of Canada as a whole?

At the same time, an historic event was taking place in Northern Quebec. In February, the Grand Council of the Crees and Premier Bernard Landry signed a nation-to-nation agreement to guide development in the region over the next fifty years. The agreement sets a new standard for securing the consent of an Aboriginal nation to development on its lands. It provides for sharing of resource revenue from three sectors: electricity, mining and forestry, and it recognizes the Cree people’s right to determine their own economic future.

Grand Chief Ted Moses, in his speech at the signing ceremony answered many of the questions I was thinking about. He said, in part:

For 26 years the Cree Nation has been fighting to breathe life and spirit into [the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement] that has become the subject of many legal challenges - challenges from the Crees, challenges from the governments and from others.

Today we will be able to put that adversity behind us, and redirect our attention, our energy, and our imaginations to our common effort, in real partnership with Quebec, to plan for a future that includes Les Quebecois, includes the Cree People.....

The agreement we are signing here today...is the first serious step in the implementation of the recommendations of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, and is for now, the only instance in Canada of a governmental authority recognizing and implementing the operational principles of self-determination called for by the United Nations Human Rights committee.

I have argued that a new relationship between Aboriginal peoples and others in Canada is urgently needed, that it will bring benefit to both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal partners, that it is consistent with Canadian law and social values.

There is another compelling reason to join our efforts to achieve good relations. The world needs a model of peace and friendship between peoples that Canada is uniquely positioned to provide.

The greatest challenge to the world community in this century is how to promote harmonious relations between peoples of disparate origins, histories, languages and religions who find themselves intermingled in a single state. The USSR has fractured into constituent nations. The former Yugoslavia has fallen into bitter strife along nationalist and religious lines. The troubles in Northern Ireland continue to flare up in spite of international efforts to broker peace.

Canada and Canadians have played a prominent and distinguished role in advancing the philosophy, practice and protection of human rights around the world. Michael Ignatieff in a recent book cites Canada’s remarkable inventiveness in finding ways to enable a large, multi-ethnic, multinational state to survive and even prosper. Negotiation and compromise were instituted as civic values in the historic alliance of anglophones and francophones led by Baldwin and Lafontaine in 1848. But before that, Aboriginal peoples had introduced warring Europeans to the protocols by which nations could relate to one another as brothers, travelling the river of life sharing prosperity and hardship, autonomous enough to guide their own vessels but close enough to render mutual aid.

Public discourse on relations with Aboriginal peoples has been overtaken with inertia in recent years. The issues which flare up periodically within Canada and which mar Canada’s reputation as a human rights advocate internationally will not disappear on their own. The words of Zebedee Nungak, an Inuit leader speaking in the final moments of a First Ministers’ meeting in 1987 ring true for many Aboriginal people today:

We continue to have a hope that this great country, which we embrace as our own, will have the sense and the decency - not that I doubt its decency - to someday, in my generation, recognize our rights, and complete the circle of Confederation, because if it is not going to be done in my generation, I have my son standing behind me who will take up the fight with your sons and your sons’ sons.

The costs of conflict, in the courts and in society, are unsupportable. The costs of doing nothing escalate with each generation. We have the capacity to imagine a better future and we have the tools at hand to realize it. Let us decide now to pursue our common goals together, to achieve long life, health and wisdom for all, good relations and peace between peoples and respect for the earth that supports us.

Masi cho. Thank you for your attention.