[Witness spoke in Niitsipowahsin and provided the following translation:]

Friends and representatives of the federal government, my traditional name is Makiinima. We send you our greetings.

[English]

On behalf of the Kainai Blood Tribe, we send you greetings from the land of the Kainai Blood Tribe.

I want to quickly share a bit of history about our tribe and the relationship we have with aohkíí—water.

Of course, we will support any legislation that confirms our ownership of our water in, on, under and boundary to our reserve lands, as well as our inherent right to govern that water. The history I want to quickly share with you is that our reserve is bounded by four rivers: the St. Mary, the Belly, the Waterton and the Oldman. Of course, that is our water. Other jurisdictions have tried to lay claim to that water, but it is ours. We use the water for drinking, domestic and agricultural purposes. We have the largest irrigation farm in Canada. Of course, we fully utilize the irrigation that takes place. We are the largest producers of timothy forage hay in Canada—soon to be in North America. We export to many countries.

Therefore, the use and ownership of water are not new matters to us. We will continue to use the water that bounds our reserve. It is important that this bill includes any amendments with respect to waters that bound our reserve, not just the ones in, under and within the reserve. It's so important to us.

We certainly, of course, support Chief Crowfoot's call for amendments to recognize that first nations have a human right to safe drinking water, and Chief Knowlton's comments about being able to utilize our waters for other purposes, such as agriculture. We want to emphasize that some amendments have to be made. Source water protection is important to us. However, because of the rivers I mentioned that bound our reserve, most of that source is from the United States of America—the state of Montana. More importantly, it's from the lands of our cousins the Blackfeet in Montana, who are part of our confederacy. We of course share the water rights issues they have as well.

I need to get back to an important conference we are hosting for the membership of the confederacy. It's a conference on our language.

[Witness spoke in Niitsipowahsin]

[English]

Of course, I have to get back and make some closing remarks. I would request that our senior counsel Dorothy First Rider represent me after my initial presentation.

Thank you, Chairperson and members of the committee, for giving us some time to make our comments.