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I'm a chief in my own culture, but I'm a small chief. In fact, 

 when the members of the council of chiefs in my village meet, my 

 chieftain title is so small that I sit under a coconut tree outside the 

 chiefs' council meeting. 



But nevertheless, it's my most profound respect for the culture, 

 and this is something that I'm sure that there is a great sensitivity 

 by the members to do this. 



But we do this both for the culture, but we also need to be pro- 

 gressive in our thinldng. And the world has changed, and I couldn't 

 agree more with Mr. Frank about the Bolt decision. It's made a tre- 

 mendous impact on this whole issue of the rights of Indian to fish 

 and wildlife. 



It's a controversial one, the problems with the rights of the states 

 versus the federal government with the tribes. But I think we have 

 to be constantly at it, or else things get lost on the way. 



So I just want to give that sense of my feelings and certainly to 

 the members of the panel and my respect for your being here this 

 morning. 



Mr. Frank? 



Mr. Frank. Mr. Chairman. This is part of my little, I've got a 

 little history for you. 



And I've got to say it to you. I can't say it to anybody else on 

 the panel, but because of where you're fi-om. 



But before the turn of the century, and that's a long time ago, 

 well, there's some warm water comes by off of our coast about 40 

 or 50 miles off of the mainland. 



And it comes around, from Alaska, it comes around and along 

 the Pacific Coast, and then it goes down in the South American 

 coast toward your coimtry. And it's documented that you have 

 some of our logs, and that you made csinoes out of them and pad- 

 dles. 



And canoes are part of our culture and spiritual life and the pad- 

 dles that we have and make, and how we train our children to be 

 good paddlers, and now even our women are paddlers. And you 

 guys are certainly canoe people. 



But those logs, how they got out into that ocean, was from all 

 the storms that took place and the high water and the snow runoff 

 and the different things that takes place up there. 



Of course, there was hemlock, there was cedar, there was fir, dif- 

 ferent other types of spruce and different things that went out into 

 the ocean. 



And sooner or later, they reached your country. And so that con- 

 nected us a lot of ways, in more ways than one. It connected us 

 people. 



And now today we can talk about how that connection was made. 

 But we talk about that in our homeland and about your people over 

 in those islands out there, because we're all one people. And now 

 we're related to one another in different ways. 



We go to school with each other, and our cultures have met. But 

 at that pEirticular time, it met by our natural resource, and that 

 was by logs in the way. 



And I just wanted to share that story with you. 



Mr. Faleomavaega. Well, Mr. Frank, I appreciate that. 



