Last week I wrote about the weddings in Fort Norman. Here is a photo of the Lennie -Manuel wedding. I love to celebrating weddings. As I mentioned last week, there must be a lot of love in Fort Good Hope. There were three weddings over the weekend of Aug. 17 to 19. People looked so classy!

Now, down to business. Even in our isolation along the Mackenzie River, we cannot complain, especially when you turn on the TV and see the world falling apart: wildfires; flooding; illegal immigrants coming to Canada; monsoons; and hurricanes, etc. We have been lucky in our territory as we only had one fire at Good Hope.

We must face the truth with the world overflowing with people. They need more land. And, who has more empty land space in the world? Canada. So, the Aboriginal leaders better wake up to the fact that they cannot keep saying, SA国际影视传媒淭his is my landSA国际影视传媒� if it's land they donSA国际影视传媒檛 use anymore.

Time for a wake-up call in our NWT. The Aboriginals must wake up and encourage development in our huge land mass of Canada or lose it. You know the saying, SA国际影视传媒渦se it or lose it.SA国际影视传媒� One way the leaders can use it is to encourage mining, fishing lodges, do animal husbandry with the caribou SA国际影视传媒� just like the Laplanders do SA国际影视传媒� and train the people in mining skills for the jobs and more jobs in mining they which needs to encouraged.

We know past leaders who encouraged the idea of protecting the land. Protect it from what? People donSA国际影视传媒檛 use the land anymore, not like our parents and ancestors did before we had the GNWT. Time to listen to the young people. They want and need jobs! They must be trained for all the different jobs they need to build a future for the young generations and generations to come.

By the way, in the Aug. 28 edition of News/North, there was a short story informing us of public meetings happening as the mining and exploration industries are about to get new legislation ("Mining, exploration meetings taking place across NWT").

Meetings will be at Fort Simpson, August 31, Norman Wells, September 5, and Inuvik, September 6. This is our chance as regular citizens to speak up on our thoughts for the development of our territory. The Sahtu region being the only truly isolated region, they should fly the leaders and the youth and the elders to Norman Wells for this most important meeting.

Sahtu is truly isolated, but, does the GNWT care? If they had their wits about them, they would at least have us on their radar screen? Maybe create a department of sorts to help us. For example, we have five communities, put an institution or factory such as a jail, trades training, factories, in each town. Something to create jobs. But, no. GNWT does not look further than Yellowknife and regions with a highway. The leaves are starting to turn yellow SA国际影视传媒� must clean the yard and get ready for winter. So, see you next week.