Aboriginal people to improve the appalling conditions of our lives and to have meaningful participation in the Canadian mosaic, we have to be treated as nations. We can well understand those concerns. Aboriginal people feel a strong sense of injustice about the manner in which they have been treated by governments and the justice system over the years. But for many non-Aboriginal people, it is difficult to understand the full dimension of this injustice. A large amount of cultural faith and assumption is at work in what Aboriginal people are saying. We imagine it would be equally difficult for a non-Aboriginal person to try to explain why "democracy" works, or how "capitalism" works. To a large extent, explanations of such phenomena require a high degree of conceptual background knowledge which is difficult to attain in as short a period of time as was available to the Inquiry. It is clear that for Aboriginal people, their faith in the ability of their cultural institutions and their leaders to undertake the revival of ancient principles for modern institutions is quite high. They obviously, as well, place a high degree of importance on the matter. We heard from representatives of national Aboriginal organizations on the topic. Christopher McCormick, national spokesperson for the Native Council of Canada, representing Metis and non-status Indians in Canada, said this: The first step is to recognize that tinkering won?t work, and that what will work is empowerment. Until the justice system can accommodate the reality of our self-determination,