Derek Neary
Northern News Services

Fort Simpson (Apr 19/02) - The Dene want to assume control of a regional government, but not at everyone else's expense, according to elder Leo Norwegian.

"We're not saying this is our land. We're not telling you (non-aboriginals) to get away from here ... but respect the land," Norwegian said during the opening day of a governance conference in Fort Simpson Tuesday.

"We know that you white people are our friends ... we've got to hear each other." He said the Dene don't want to return to the past.

Instead they hope to combine their own ways with those of non-aboriginals to form a Dene public government.

"That way we'll all be satisfied and help each other," he suggested.

Norwegian said aboriginal people had governed themselves prior to the arrival of non-aboriginals, although they never called it a government. They lived off the gifts of the land -- plants and animals.

"Ever since we were young we've been taught how to look after ourself," he said.

The white man has not honoured the treaty because the aboriginals saw it as a treaty of friendship, not land ownership, according to Fort Providence elder Ted Landry.

Landry, like Norwegian, remembers when his people relied solely on the land. In those days there were no guns, they used bows and arrows; there were no fish nets, they weaved strips of willow; there were no axes, they used moose horns to puncture the ice.

They used animal bones for knives and lived in teepees. People shared what they had.

"It was very harsh but still people survived," said Landry. "They also protected their land."