They were, these people, considering the amount of work, the difficulty of the geography, they were very brave hardworking people, not lazy at all. There was always a leader in the group, a captain or a chief, and they would show a direction and people would go in that direction and listen to the chief, to the captain or the leader. They would cover long distances in their journey sometimes just to sell fur and get something back. They would go to a trading post and it’s amazing how our parents were fit and not lazy at all, hardworking.

Among all those groups that are around here, I think that the government is creating a lot of prejudice against us. They undermine a lot of our rights. We are the poorest of the poorest in the sense that we are the last in line. If you look all around here – all the ore that has been exploited and the wealth generated and created, and even today, all the work that has been done on the exploration, we still haven’t seen any benefit for our community and all of this is done without our knowledge or consent – without our prior consent. And this is our homeland.

The white people tell us of all the benefits and perks that we have because we are Indians. We have fiscal privileges because we are Indian. I often hear complaints from white people saying we have free housing, freebies everywhere, but the thing that they don’t know is that if the white person wants to leave the community and to go to another place in another municipality, they will be able to sell the house, sell their property and they will get some money back out of it – but it is not the same with us. If I want to leave this community, I am stuck with this house. If I leave it I won’t get my money back but it’s different for the white people. They get their money back and are able to use it to buy another house somewhere else.

Nowadays I feel like we are being stamped, we are numbered just like cows are numbered when the farmer brands them, and I feel like that because we are numbered. We are given a number from the government and I feel like a cow.

And then with this card [Indian Status Card] came a regime whereby they place a fence around the territory of the people, the Indian people who wouldn’t be allowed to get out of the reserve and the white people wouldn’t be allowed to get into the reserve.