OTTAWA Prime Minister Jean Chretien promised Thursday to take aboriginal concerns to the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City next month.
He did so as 300 indigenous leaders from North, South and Central America began a historic meeting to protest their exclusion from ongoing trade talks.
“For too long, the voices of Aboriginal Peoples have not been heard in the councils of government or in the management of their own economic, social and cultural affairs,” Chretien wrote in an open, signed letter.
Matthew Coon Come, national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, read it Thursday during a ceremony to begin the first Indigenous Peoples Summit of the Americas.
The meeting mirrors the Quebec City summit being held April 20-22.
