How to skip system hotkeys when using terminal emacs

keyboardterminal

I like to run GNU emacs in a Terminal window under Mac OS X 10.6.4.

Unfortunately, whenever I hit a hot key for emacs I often "trip" on an OS X system hot key.

For instance, when I hit ⌃ + space in emacs, I end up opening Spotlight.

Is there a way to "skip" system level hot keys when I use emacs under Terminal.app?

I hate to have to manually deactivate all system hot keys and re-enable them whenever I use emacs.

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