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ADDRESS BY GRAND CHIEF TED MOSES TO THE
LOCAL ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
AND CAREER FAIR CONFERENCE
Wemindji, Eeyou Istchee
December 1, 2004
May I first of all say to
you how honoured I am to have been invited to speak
primarily to the youth of Wemindji. Whenever I am
invited to speak to an assembly of Cree youth I consider
it to be a genuine honour. Now, the youth in the
audience today may find it a bit strange that the Grand
Chief of the Cree Nation would be honoured to be in the
presence of a gathering of youth. But let me explain why
I feel that way. The current Cree leadership, with only
one or two exceptions, are more or less part of the same
generation. We are in our 40’s or 50’s and have been
involved in either local or regional positions within
the Cree Nation for quite a long time.
When I address our Cree youth and I look into the
audience and see the young faces I know that I am
addressing the future leaders—the future chiefs, the
future Grand Chiefs and the future administrators—of the
Cree Nation. When I look out into an audience such as
this one I know that I am in the presence of future
greatness, and for this reason I am genuinely honoured.
It is one of the basic responsibilities of people in
leadership positions to try and look into the future and
to try to predict what that future might have in store
for the people whom a leader serves, and then to pass
along a vision of what that future can be. And then, a
leader must provide some guidelines and a roadmap for
how to get there. A leader must summon up both realism
and compassion in describing a vision which can be
achieved.
Today, I would like to share with you a little bit of
the vision which I and other Cree leaders have for the
future and I would like to pass along to you a few
thoughts on how we might be able to get there. I pass
these on to you in the hope that it may assist you as
you look into your own personal futures and make
decisions about the direction of your own lives.
As everyone knows, the Cree Nation has undergone some
very significant changes over the last thirty years
since the time that the James Bay and Northern Quebec
Agreement was signed.
At that time, our people were mostly hunters and
trappers living on the land in a traditional Cree way of
life. By that time also, our youth had begun to be sent
away to residential schools and were returning with
different experiences, with new ideas, and without the
same experiences on the land that their elders
maintained.
Since then, in addition to being skilled hunters and
trappers, we have also begun to be skilled
administrators, teachers, nurses and lawyers.
The James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement resulted in
our taking control over the administration of our
communities, our schools and our clinics. Some shifts
began to occur in the way in which our people sought
their livelihoods. While the traditional way of life
continued to be very important many of our younger
people at the time became involved in the development of
our communities. With the introduction of the Cree-Naskapi Act, control over the development of the
communities shifted from the Department of Indian
Affairs to the communities themselves. With that shift
arose the possibility for a wide range of administrative
and technical-level employment which is required to
operate our communities and to provide a wide range of
programs and services to benefit our members.
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