- Aren’t Indigenous people opposed to such developments?
You’re getting that depiction because it sells the headlines. You’re not seeing the great work that has been done along the Coastal GasLink pipeline. You’re not getting the stories of our community members gaining meaningful employment, meaningful careers from this one project.
It’s a sensationalism. It’s a very small minority group. I have felt that backlash personally. However, I felt very passionate about what these projects meant, not just for my community, not just for my daughters and my grandchildren, but what it meant for the 19 other nations along the pipeline and the two to three other nations down the channel of what this economic development project meant for our community.
I have numerous families that have been provided opportunities on the LNG Canada and Coastal GasLink projects, to the point where I’ve seen my younger sister purchase a home even before she was 30, where I’ve seen my nephew who worked on the Coastal GasLink project provide his family a home well under the age of 25.
Where we’re going to see future generational changes is when it comes to the education levels in our communities. We’re going to see our culture and our language become revitalized in our community to the point that we’re going to have very, very strong, very independent and very proud Haisla members that know who they are, know where they come from and have that strength re-instilled in them.
We are definitely supporting the largest amount of post-secondary students that our nation has ever seen. We’re able to provide supports for tutoring, we’re able to provide supports for daycare that will remove every barrier necessary to ensure that our people are successful.
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