Caroline Cochrane

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to recognize one of the Pages, young Ms. Brooke Vallis, who is a member of Range Lake, and we are really honoured to have her here as a Page. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Again, that was one of the contentious issues that was brought, and that was why I came to standing committee, was when I had given a direction asking the NWT Status of Women to support me in having more women in the leadership. I was definitely told that that mandate is my mandate. It is not for the Status of Women to do, and that I need to do that. So what are we doing? We are doing the campaign schools. We're just finishing up the draft; I'll be sharing that fairly soon. We will be contracting with the Native Women's Association and the NWT Status of Women to actually do a pilot of those...

Again, as I stated the other day in answering that question, the Status of Women Council has been successful in accessing -- one of the mines has given them, I believe, either $8,000 or $9,000, and then they are also eligible for at least $5,000 through the Women's Initiative. That, in total, if I look at the lower of $8,000, that's actually a total of $13,000. If we were to honour four women, that would be probably about $3,000 per community. Traditionally, throughout my years of being a Minister here and going to events, usually it's about $500 that we give for a community feast, which...

Again, like I had said -- sorry, we just knocked over a basket -- the Indigenous language programming is offered not only to JK; it's also to all students, so the JK students are actually able to take part in the programming that's already being offered to the kindergarten students. I do want to point out that we have two communities, Fort Providence is one of them, and Behchoko, actually, that have more of an Indigenous immersion. Within Behchoko, it's JK, junior kindergarten, to grade two, full immersion, and then Fort Providence is junior kindergarten to grade three. I think those are fine...

We do have some resources already that we use within our schools. We are always redoing our resources. The same resources that we would use for kindergarten with our Indigenous languages will be used for junior kindergarten. A lot of that is actually having elders come in and speak with them and play with them, so the development of resources isn't always having a book. That is more of a western culture. Within an Indigenous culture, it's more storytelling, having elders coming in and speaking to the children and showing them concrete examples, so we try to incorporate both western culture and...

Like I had said earlier, our nursing program is actually a fine example of what we should be doing and how we can actually improve our college. Although I have to say that Aurora College is viewed by its partners as a leader in integrating our cultural competency and safety through the recommendations of the program, that may speak to the amount of speakers that we still have in the Northwest Territories and our vibrant culture that we still have, recognizing that we are losing it quickly. It is something that we need to expand on and that we need to work on, but at least we have something to...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Aurora College right now is Aurora College, not Arctic College. We kind of consider ourselves a five-partner arrangement in that we work with the University of British Columbia on three components and we also work with the University of Victoria. The University of Victoria has a pretty comprehensive policy around it, but, in saying that, we need to do more.

Once we are done the visioning exercise across the Northwest Territories to look at what our polytechnic university will look like and then that work is brought into the polytechnic university, we need to make sure...

I would like to be able to stand here and say that at every workshop, forum, et cetera, we do use an Indigenous language, but that is not true. That is a fallacy. I do want to give credit to the Members of the Legislative Assembly who do use their language. I think it is very important.

We are losing our languages quickly, and that is why we are really focusing on this revitalization within the schools. Until we can actually get our youth and people speaking more, we are at risk of losing it. Our elders right now are our knowledge keepers. They are our language keepers, but our elders are...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I do want to put a shout out to the Tlicho government for the work that they have done. They actually gave me a copy of their language resource that they are using in the school and the teaching guide, and I was quite impressed with what they do, but the question was: what are we doing? That is important.

We did table our Indigenous language action plan; I believe it was last year. It is called Shared Responsibility, recognizing that preserving and revitalizing language is a shared responsibility. We all have a role to do in that. The action plan really focused on two...

I do not know, actually, what the Status of Women, the NWT Status of Women, is doing for International Day. I do know that I will be doing a speech in the House to recognize it. Other than that, I'm not sure, again, what the Status of Women will be doing, or if they are doing it. That is the direction for the Status of Women to do. It is not for me as the Minister to direct them on what to do.