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The story of
Nunavut, a project to create a self-governing territory in the
eastern and northern portions of the Northwest Territories, is
important for all Canadians. It is the most ambitious of the
Canadian aboriginal proposals for self-government, yet is also one
of the most practical. It combines Canadian traditions of social and
political philosophy with the needs of Inuit culture. It embraces
concepts of environment and development, and social values and
administration, of the most enlightened modern sort—of the type
Canada preaches in the world. Its realisation would be the most
clear statement of Canada’s genuine human rights convictions and
commitment to full sovereignty for the politicians and policymakers
in Ottawa to take.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s when young Inuit began using their
newly acquired education and contact with the currents in the world
outside their northern homeland, they began to question the
situation of their people. They had just come through a time in
which the wisdom and authority of their elders had been supplanted
by young white administrators with limited appreciation of Inuit
language and society. Their people’s way of life had been one of
extensive use of the living environment based in scattered camps,
but now they had been resettled in confused and confusing bungalow
communities where an all inclusive administration tried to reshape
every aspect of their lives. They had seen ill family members
disappear south for long periods, and often die there, alone. Their
own schools had been leaders in the task of replacing their old
“primitive” culture with the new ways of the white man, an urban
industrial “mainstream” white man at that. It is not surprising that
when the world was reverberating with de colonisation in Africa and
Asia, and North America in the throes of a revaluing of minorities
and the building of a caring society, these first Inuit school
leavers should speak out.
The first object of concern was the domination of Inuit by white men
and white man’s government. But soon another followed, and one about
which no Inuit could be the least confused: the cavalier use of the
land and waters of “our land,”nunavut in the Inuit language, by
industrial firms seeking new energy and mineral sources. The living
species and natural habitat which had always sustained Inuit were
now under threat themselves. The Indians of western and northern
Canada had signed treaties many years earlier over these same
issues, but the outcome had not been encouraging. Now in Alaska the
Inuit, Dene, Haida, Tlingit and Aleuts, an Inuit related people,
were trying a new model, an apparently gigantic land claims
settlement. The billion dollars involved made it sound breathtaking,
and there is little doubt that it showed both aboriginal Canadians
and their governments that the unthinkable—a renegotiation of
European settlement of America— was indeed thinkable.
The Inuit of the Keewatin and Baffin regions of the eastern
Northwest Territories had many ties, some ancient and cultural, and
others which were a result of more recent administrative patterns.
The people of the central arctic or Kitikmeot region shared history
and way of life, but had more recent ties with the Fort Smith and
Yellowknife administrations which had successively governed the
western NWT. The Inuvialuit, the Inuit of the Mackenzie River delta
and the Beaufort Sea communities, were an Alaskan people who had
moved into their area during the 20th century to replace the
Mackenzie Inuit who had mostly died out. The Nunavut heartland of
the eastern arctic, in other words, had no associations with the
western NWT until the early 1970s when its administration based in
Ottawa was removed to Yellowknife with development of the NWT
territorial administration. That administration had opened for
businessin 1967, but only concerned itself with the western area
until it could digest the complications of a whole new government
system. Not only had the eastern and western NWT been administered
separately, but in the early 1960s both Conservative and Liberal
governments had been in the process of dividing the NWT to create an
eastern Nunatsiaq territory. That project came to grief on the
shoals of minority government because some northerners pointed out
that the east was being constituted a new entity without any say in
the matter.
Nothing Canadians have done has earned more awe and respect among
human rights observers abroad than the substantial funding of
regional and national Indian, Metis and Inuit associations. That
national system was being consolidated in the early 1970s. The
Commissioner of the Northwest Territories opposed extension of the
system into the north because he believed in grass roots
organisation rather than sponsored politicisation from above, and
because he sincerely regarded ethnically based groups as dangerous
and racist. He was a large man with forceful views, and he was
speaking for much opinion in Canada at the time. For a generation
who had fought against the evils of Nazi race theory, and who were
trying to build a postwar society where there was equal opportunity
for all, the affirmative action approach to minority issues was
disturbing. It took many years for society to come to terms with
these matters. More popular at the time among officials and some
northern residents was the view that in the north a truly
multiracial, multicultural society could develop in which all were,
simply, northerners. The notion of special administration for
Indians, for instance, had proven such a baneful experience in
Canada that few policymakers wished to perpetuate ethnic
administration. But the Alaska case was proving intriguing to some,
and the united fury of Canadian Indians to the mid1969 white paper
on Indian policy recommending the end to special status began to
move public thinking. The ruminations of the Supreme Court judges in
the Calder, or Nishga case, in the early 1970s were another major
event, leading a Prime Minister who was the national champion
against nationalist ethnocentrism to declare that the aboriginal
people obviously had more particular rights that many, including
himself, had thought.
In the north itself, the hopes for a single northern citizenship
irrespective of race were running into trouble. It was fine for
wellpaid whites to share such sentiments, but the aboriginal
majority in the NWT could not help but notice that it was they who
lacked equality in jobs, income, housing, education, etc. Although
the territorial government in the NWT was largely a service delivery
agency to provide the most comprehensive welfare state services of
any Canadian government (even while successive northern affairs
ministers in Ottawa talked of free enterprise while levering more
funds form their cabinet colleagues!), and it was the aboriginal
people who were the prime objects of that administration, the whole
system was a white man’s system in design and habit, and in it goals
and assumptions. Once northern aboriginal groups, including Inuit
ones, were off and running, they posed a challenge to the authority
of the territorial administration. Had they been cultivated as
helpful potential associates, it might all have been different. But
the territorial government led the way in heaping suspicion, abuse
and rejection on them. Since that administration was virtually all
white, and the associations were all aboriginal, the political
struggle sharpened.
Inuit developed their organizations and proposals quickly. The
strongest NWT Inuit bodies were COPE, the Inuvialuit regional body,
and Inuit Tapirisat of Canada (ITC), the national Canadian Inuit
body which some Inuit have tended to regard as too flagrantly
devoted to the Nunavut area which, after all includes only three of
Canada’s six Inuit regions. (The others are the Inuvialuit western
arctic, arctic Quebec and the north coast of Labrador.) The NWT
Inuit worked on a common land claims policy, but eventually COPE
broke away to pursue its interests in the face of its unique
situation as the most developed area of Canadian Inuit and the
areaunder most immediate threat of major resources development. ITC
had fixed its hopes on a proposal for Nunavut: a land claims
settlement proposal including creation of a Nunavut territorial
government. In other words, while the Nunavut government would
function as a provincialtype government open to all residents, the
large population majority who were Inuit could expect to dominate
its life just as Frenchspeaking people dominate Quebec.1 And the
claims settlement would reinforce the economic, cultural and social
rights of Inuit through specially created bodies controlled by
Inuit.
The COPE claim was settled in the early 1980s, so that Inuit of
Nunavut now have that experience plus that of Quebec Inuit who
settled their claim in 1975 (including establishment of a regional
government), of Alaskan Inuit in several quite different regions who
settled in 19712 and in Greenland, an Inuit selfgoverning country
within the Danish kingdom3. These experiences have been full of
problems and shot through with successes, so there is much to be
learned. (As a student of comparative aboriginal selfgovernment
development, I am tempted to conclude that most of the problems are
both foreseeable and avoidable.) The federal government has insisted
that Nunavut claims and territorial government creation must be
negotiated separately, although it links them itself whenever it
wishes to put pressure on Inuit. While the Nunavut claims have been
worked on steadily for more than a decade, however, the creation of
a Nunavut government only became the occupation of a specific body
in 1982 following an NWTwide plebiscite on division of the NWT to
create Nunavut. In the eastern half of the NWT, the Nunavut
heartland, the vote was 41 for Nunavut in a record voter turnout.
The result so stunned the observers that nobody attempted any longer
to deny Nunavut. Both the Yellowknife and Ottawa governments moved
to make creation of Nunavut their avowed policy. And in Yellowknife
the territorial government imaginatively and wisely sponsored two
new bodies, the Nunavut Constitutional Forum and the Western
Constitutional Forum, to carry out the work of devising new
governments. These bodies contain Members of the Legislative
Assembly elected from each area, plus the leaders of aboriginal
associations in the area. Each Forum is itself representative of the
social and political realities of the two halves of the NWT. No less
real is the fact that COPE has the right to sit in either or both
Forums, and Inuvialuit ambivalence has been the main specific
obstacle to speedy creation of Nunavut. A later delay has also been
occasioned by Dene and Metis discomfort with a proposed Nunavut
boundary, but that is under active negotiation and is soluble. The
federal government rather strangely has, on the one hand, appeared
to leave the drawing of these national frontiers to the aboriginal
peoples of the north, and on the other, given them no advice,
assistance, guidance or expertise in the process. Many observers
have noted that this may well be an official tactic to increase the
likelihood of failure to secure any boundary.
The aboriginal organisations funded by Ottawa have changed the
character of the north and of Canada. In the NWT they were the first
aboriginal public bodies which could tackle territorywide and
national issues. In spite of, or perhaps because of, territorial
government hostility, they became rallying points for aboriginal
opinion. And while the territorial governments excluded aboriginal
employees form policy or management levels, despite many directives
insisting on greater aboriginal hiring, the organisations provided
them work and great opportunities for social and political action.
Very quickly Ottawa recognised de facto that NWT politics, opinion
and political legitimacy were divided between the legislature and
the aboriginal associations. Great care was taken to balance these
interests, and Ottawa through the Trudeau and Clark government years
played a role of active neutrality: its goal was to secure a social,
economic and political development in the north which would provide
equality between aboriginal northerners and the newer arrival. In
particular, Ottawa resisted territorialgovernment attempts to secure
devolution of powers and budgets, seeing clearly that these would
consolidate the position of, and otherwise benefit, the whites while
largely leaving aboriginal northerners aside.
The NWT territorial government had evolved considerably, however.
The turning point was the October, 1979, election which swept into
oblivion the older white leaders who had insisted on a north
modelled on the south, with politics and economy on their hands.
They had opposed aboriginal rights, claims settlements, and
political and institutional adjustments for aboriginal people, while
seeing in massive resource development the hopes for their business
community. A new group was elected now, consisting of younger whites
who recognised the need to accommodate the interests of their
aboriginal fellow citizens, and young aboriginal leaders themselves.
They met in special session at once and reversed most of the major
politics on aboriginal rights and constitutional issues of preceding
legislators. They also set up a special committee on NWT “unity”,
and the committee quickly found and announced that neither the
present borders nor the present administration of the NWT were
meaningful to most residents, especially the aboriginal residents.
It was this discussion which, under Inuit pressure, led to the
abovementioned plebiscite.
The NWT government is something of a marvel. Its history deserves to
be written and written carefully before it all, soon one expects,
passes into the past. Essentially it is the greatest Canadian
monument to progressive programming for an underdeveloped area, and
the boldest attempt at total government ever seen in this country.
It was the designed to respond humanely to the poverty and isolation
Canadians saw in the north, and to deliver southern standards of
living conditions to the most remote icebound hamlets. It cut
corners to upgrade living standards quickly, and the main corner cut
was the viewpoint of the aboriginal residents. This administration
concentrated expertise to solve northern problems, to bring the good
things from the south to the north. It was a directed effort, and
was specifically designed to deliver outside goods rather than
respond to inside opinion. As aboriginal people recovered their
balance from the massive concentration of their scattered camps into
new villages and the change of all that was familiar to them, they
found, not surprisingly, a system which had little interest in their
ideas. After all, the perceived primitivity of their ideas was one
of the things which was to be changed. Of course there were many
individuals who were outstanding in their commitment and sensitivity
to Inuit, Metis and Dene needs and preferences. But in general the
government system was one which changed the North dramatically and
in ways which had vast implications for every individual aboriginal
life. The replacement of a federal administrative bureaucracy by a
territorial one from 19678, and with an elected northern legislature
to continue to distribute and bargain over the federal largesse, did
not really change very much at the top. However, it did provide more
local employment in government overall, and it recruited a
relatively young, highly capable and deeply committed public
service. This public service is probably pound for pound the best in
Canada at its main task of service delivery. As one deputy minister
in Yellowknife said to me, “Let’s face it: this is a shit and water
government.” But if sewers and water are major tasks, many of the
underlying problems today are philosophical and legal, institutional
and economic, and in such policy areas the NWT government has been
almost incapable of action. Part of the problem is the lack of
jurisdiction over land and resources, but there is also the fact
that budgets are almost entirely tied to a very rich service level
which someday will break the whole system wide open, and the
unsettled, stalemated claims and constitutional development
processes. The basic consensus on what the NWT is and should be is
lacking. Nunavut is the biggest piece in this puzzle, but as Dene
and Metis voters saw when they supported Nunavut in the 1982
plebiscite, that change is the key to reordering
territorialgovernment for the west the Dene, Metis and Inuvialuit
homelands as well.
The territorial legislature has been highly productive in proportion
to the weakness of the executive. Committees have been important and
local interests are bargained back and forth. The “premier”
(officially the Government Leader) has not chosen his own ministers,
and so the cabinet has been in fact eight equal persons of no one
political orientation. Policymaking on the larger subjects has been
nonexistent because impossible. Yet a party system may be premature
until the Nunavut issue is settled: the Inuit bloc, including white
elected from Nunavut, are in fact the main “party.”
The Nunavut Constitutional Forum (NCF) began its work in August,
1982. It settled on a work plan which would produce some background
studies beginning with a history of the Nunavut concept, followed by
studies of major issues such as the federalNunavut division of
powers and fiscal relations, and concluding with a comprehensive
proposal for government in Nunavut4. The NCF meetings were marked
by their almost excessive openness, so the press and public had the
opportunity to participate in constitutionmaking. (On at least one
major issue the press was handed a text before it had been discussed
by the principals, and an anomalous point so became NCF policy.)
Meetings were frequent in 1983 and 1984, and work intense. In late
1983 tours of Keewatin and Baffin region communities, and then
Central Arctic communities, took place, with the Western Arctic
Inuvialuit communities visited in the first half of 1984. Inuit knew
well what many northern groups have not: that for success in
changing federal policy a parallel southern campaign with its own
rules and materials must accompany political action within the
north.
These tours yielded several important points. Inuit wanted their
language and elements of their customs protected and promoted in
Nunavut. This would mean securing official language use of
Inuktitut, an easily agreed principle but one which will take time
and serious development to implement. Nothing could be more
important, however, and a good bargaining is being made by the NWT
government today. In Greenland, Inuktitut is a language of
legislation and all business, the main language of the country. As
for Inuit customs, a study of customary law has proceeded, on again
and off again, but will certainly proceed. The most likely prospects
are for heavy Inuit customary elements in the administration of
justice and in local government.
Another universal point was the need for a Nunavut government to be
an active participant in offshore management. Federal governments
have been moving towards greater recognition of Inuit offshore
interests because of the Canadian claim to full marine sovereignty
in the arctic based on Inuit use and occupancy of the arctic islands
and seas and ice between. The Mulroney government has agreed to
negotiate Inuit rights to help manage and secure revenues from
offshore renewable and nonrenewable resources as part of land
claims. (In other respects, however, that government has limited the
scope of claims negotiations to the disappointment of Inuit.)
Finally, Inuit were concerned that Nunavut not simply be another
government which directed and changed their lives, so they were most
concerned that significant Inuit employment in that government be
secured so the governors would understand and be sympathetic to the
governed. They also were motivated by the critical job shortage
among the extraordinarily large youth population. This problem is
one of continuing concern, and crash upgrading programs such as that
which took place among the Inuit of North Slope Alaska may have to
be developed.
Otherwise, the Nunavut proposal is one for a continuation of the now
familiar institutions of territorial government, i.e., similar to
provincial governments across Canada. Inuit wish to make use of
technology, at which their youth have shown themselves
exceptionallygifted, to provide a decentralised administration. This
should also help with Inuitisation because there are many trained
but under employed or unemployed persons in the villages, persons
whose family ties and culture would keep them from moving to a
centre elsewhere.
But two major challenges have threatened Nunavut. The first in time
was the western boundary of Nunavut. Ideally Inuit would like
Nunavut to include the Inuvialuit homeland, but this is rejected by
aboriginal and white residents of the Mackenzie Valley in the
western NWT. It is also rejected privately in Ottawa because of fear
that to so define a jurisdiction around a single ethnic group would
feed separatist and irredentist moods in Quebec, in Acadia, in Inuit
Quebec or Anglophone west Montreal Island. The fact that such a
Nunavut would almost adjoin the rambunctious Inuit North Slope
Borough government on the west and the socialist Greenland
government on the east also generates fears of a panInuit homeland
movement.5 In traditional Inuit society confrontation is frowned
upon, and the rather traditional eastern Nunavut Inuit did not force
the boundary issue. The Inuvialuit wanted to avoid a choice which
many of their people would find wrenching, abandoning the western
ties they knew or abandoning the eastern Inuit whose numbers could
weigh favourably for future political needs. Some Inuvialuit leaders
also calculated that if they stayed undecided, they could see how
rich a deal the NCF and WCF might be prepared to make because they
were clear that a regional Inuvialuit government was more important
to them than any choice of Nunavut or western territory in future.
The boundary agreed in January, 1985, leaving the Inuvialuit in the
west prepared the way for the Mulroney government’s February, 1985,
commitment to creation of Nunavut in a few short years. But the
boundary agreement unravelled and the refusal of eastern Inuit to
force the issue let political momentum escape. In January, 1987, the
same basic proposal was agreed again by Inuit and DeneMetis
negotiators, and is very much alive despite delays and disputes in
1987. By late 1987 Ottawa had abandoned all interest in Nunavut, but
this may change quickly if aboriginal northerners can agree finally
on a boundary.
The other issue has been devolution of powers from Ottawa to
Yellowknife. Inuit have insisted that no devolution to the present
NWT government take place because it reinforces an unsatisfactory
institution. They would prefer that devolution await creation of the
Nunavut government. Federal minister Crombie accepted this, but
policy has changed under his successor. As well, it has been general
government policy to unload jobs and budgets to the territories to
give the appearance of a downsized federal government and of a
commitment to northern selfgovernment. By so abandoning the past bi
partisan federal policy of evenhandedness, and abandoning the making
of devolution of power to white elites conditional on their
acceptance of aboriginal rights and interests, Ottawa has now
severely threatened race relations and future stability and equality
of opportunity in the NWT. The territorial government ministers,
meanwhile, have been cock ahoop to be given more powers and funds,
especially because they do not have the painful task of other
governments in raising their own revenues.
These two recent conflicts have brought into sharp focus the two
broad political protoparties in Nunavut. Majority opinion in the
eastern arctic has been supportive of strong Inuit cultural
guarantees, environmental protection, creation of Nunavut,
collective control of and benefit from economic activity. But in the
more westerly areas of the eastern arctic and in the western arctic
is centred a more open opinion which is not particularly committed
to Inuitisation or even to Nunavut itself, favouring private small
enterprise and rapid economic development. The creation and nature
of Nunavut seem to depend on the ability of the first of these two
groupings to maintain the political initiative. Many twists and
turns may lie ahead, but there is little doubt that Nunavut will be
realised sooner or later.
Despite separate structures, the Nunavut claims body, Tungavik
Federation of Nunavut (TFN) and the Nunavut Constitutional Forum
have worked closely. Nunavut is a whole, and the government and the
claims settlement are two halves of that whole. TFN has now
commissioned a study from the Canadian Arctic Resources Committee on
the whole Nunavut policy and political conundrum, and if it is
published it will be the definitive analysis on the subject.
Meanwhile, the idealogy of Inuit in proposing Nunavut and of other
Canadian aboriginal peoples, especially in the more northern (and
more intact) areas has come down with rare authority from an
international report. The World Commission on Environment and
Development, the “Brundtland Commission”, in its 1987 report 6
states unequivocally that unless the governments of the world follow
its proposals, life on this planet will be nasty, brutish and short.
In a section on aboriginal homelands it says that where such benign
relationships of intact nature and indigenous peoples living
harmoniously with them are found, aboriginal systems of ecological
management and adaptation must be reinforced and wider political
control (“empowering”) vested in aboriginal peoples. The words in
this moving passage sound like those which Canadian Inuit have been
using matter of factly for years. With some 75% of Canada’s land
area remaining as relatively intact nature with aboriginal peoples
the main occupants of this nonurban space, the Brundtland report is
obviously speaking to Canadians.
Conclusions
The historical summary I have sketched makes the main point about
Nunavut. It is not an offtheshelf theory from a university of from
consultants, nor a vague dream, but a practical evolution in
community sentiment. It combines the experience of Canadian
constitutionmaking (through a period, it must be remembered, when
the Constitution has been a constant and highprofile subject of
discussion in Canada) with the hopes and needs of a distinct
population in a unique physical territory. It has been a product of
growth and dialogue; a leadership living in the scattered villages
of the arctic, advised by capable professional staff, have served as
animators of the wider Inuit community. The most notable
characteristic of the Nunavut area in recent years has been the
endless series of meetings on all manner of subjects. Through
thousands of hours of talk and questioning and listening, Inuit have
developed a general consensus on what kind of public services and
institutions would best meet their needs. Doubters from outside have
complained that ordinary folk in Nunavut don’t really understand
intergovernmental intricacies, a rather fatuous observation, surely,
because nobody else in Canada does either —nor is expected to! But
nobody else in Canada has been exposed to or been more frequently
asked to discuss the requirements for governing bodies—federal,
present territorial and future Nunavut bodies—than Inuit in the NWT.
And in no corner of the land are discussions about constitutions, at
national or Nunavut level, more familiar.
Modern times and recent constitutional precedent at national level,
notably the televised Parliamentary committee hearings in Ottawa in
19801 and the series of aboriginal constitutional First Ministers
Conferences, have taken constitution making away from the
specialists and placed it where it belongs, with the people. There
are basically two approaches to the development of government and
peoples’ constitutions in northern Canada. One is gradualism whereby
distinct regions and institutions gradually become assimilated to
national conventions, their cultures lost or submerged in the white,
southern modelled systems which the farming and industrial history
of Canada had developed British antecedents. The other is to
recognise the distinctive character of the North’s regions—Northwest
Territories or Yukon, Denendeh or Nunavut—and build systems which
accommodate and celebrate cultural and regional character.
Policy emphasis has alternated, and the present Mulroney government
has successively opted for each course. In February, 1985, northern
affairs minister David Crombie spoke inYellowknife saying that
Nunavut in the east and a new constitution in the west which would
include special cultural and regional features for Inuvialuit, Dene
and Metis should proceed. He was continuing and furthering the
directed momentum of the Trudeau and Clark governments before him.
But in October, 1987, northern affairs minister Bill McKnight
speaking in Whitehorse opted for the gradualism model and tied it so
explicitly to job creation and development profits that one wonders
that his government accepts the legitimacy of Quebec and the
halfdozen other “have not” provinces which receive equalisation.
Prime Minister Mulroney himself in a party poster for the north
released in autumn, 1987, devotes his largetype message to the
constitutional issue.
Canadian history teaches that the gradual maturing of territories
into provinces has been an essential part of the growth of Canada.
This government has actively promoted the steady expansion of
responsible government in the Yukon and the Northwest Territories,
and will continue to give to both territories the support they will
need for the next stages in their constitutional development.
The federal government has, for the time being, brushed aside the
recent history and trends in northern Canada in favour of a policy
which justifies its devolution program and which turns its back on
aboriginal hopes7. It is doubtful, however, if this policy would
withstand a serious political campaign of opposition from the north.
The north has not been a priority of the Mulroney government,
nuclear submarines and sovereignty claims notwithstanding, and one
suspects the new policy is a matter of convenience and naivete more
than of deep reflection or profound conviction.
The Canadian north shares many characteristics with the foreign
north. Among aboriginal peoples such as Alaskan Inuit and Indians,
Greenlandic Inuit and Laplanders (the Sami), or among the indigenous
European populations of Iceland, the Faroe Islands and Shetland, the
same emerging identities with their political and cultural
imperatives, and demands for the safeguarding of northern economic
assets traditional to these peoples, are observable. Canada shares
patterns with a wider north, and if Canadians were more aware of
this it might be easier to develop realistic policies in and for the
north.8 Inuit have been leaders in developing contact and sharing
experience with the foreign north through the Inuit Circumpolar
Conference, a permanent body now headquartered in Canada.
Meanwhile, the challenges of Nunavut and other northern proposals
will remain. They will continue to sap the life and direction of the
existing jurisdictions in which they lie, and weaken the north,
until they are resolved. They also provide a rather sour commentary
on Canada’s much publicised commitment to the rights of darkskinned
people abroad.
Peter Jull was research director, policy advisor and author for the
Nunavut Constitutional Forum from 1982 to 1987. He was a policy
assistant to successive Commissioners of the NWT and was Advisor on
the Constitution (Northern and Native Affairs) in the federal
cabinet office from 1968 to 1980. In recent years he has travelled
and studied widely in the North, writing many articles and
monographs on sociopolitical developments.
Notes
1.This point is remarkable. Inuit working to develop the Nunavut
government proposal have consistently rejected the idea of special
political rights for themselves beyond a reasonable voter residency
requirement. The north, of course, contains large populations of
transient and shortterm workers, and the residency requirement would
prevent apolitical takeover by these people. Inuit in Nunavut
community hearings repeatedly insisted that outsiders who came to
live with them in their communities should share the same rights,
e.g. local hunting. A proposal in Building Nunavut (see note 4
below) that resource industry boom sites should be “quarantined” as
is done by other northern populations, e.g., in Shetland, the Faroe
Islands, Iceland and Greenland, or in the past in northern Canada,
was vigorously attacked by the Toronto Globe and Mail editorially as
unsatisfactory. Nevertheless, the problem of temporary workers
overwhelming small northern communities is a real one and must be
faced. Perhaps if the problem were a more visible and immediate
threat, it would have elicited more concern among the builders of
Nunavut.
2.See Judge Tom Berger’s book, Village Journey, 1985, for an
evaluation sponsored by the Inuit Circumpolar Conference of the
Alaska native claims settlement.
3.See my article on Greenland in the December, 1987 issue of Policy
Options, Institute for Research on Public Policy, Ottawa, Montreal,
Halifax, etc., for a discussion of Greenland society, constitution
and politics.
4.These are widely available. Nunavut, the history, was written by
me and published in glossy format in three languages, profusely
illustrated, early 1983, by the Government of the Northwest
Territories for NCF. Mark Malone, a Parisbased political scientist
and expert on Canadian federalism prepared both Nunavut: the
division of powers and Nunavut: fiscal relations, both published in
English in early 1983. Various other studies have been prepared over
the years. In May, 1983, NCF released Building Nunavut, its
comprehensive proposal, and later the same year produced this in
glossy quatri lingual format (English, French, Inuktitut syllabics
and Central Arctic Roman orthography). The much revised second
edition of Building Nunavut, Building Nunavut Today and Tomorrow,
was available from March, 1985, and was formally adopted by a
Nunavut constitutional conference in Coppermine in September, 1985.
This latter is available in English only because it was not thought
necessary or desirable to spend large amounts of money circulating a
further publication. Other studies available from NCF include Peter
Burnet on language policy (making Inuktitut an official language of
Nunavut), Ron Doering on land (with some innovative and sadly
neglected proposals), and Jeff Richstone on human rights in Nunavut
(including the protection of the nonInuit minority).
5.As a longtime advisor to the international Inuit organisation, the
Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC), I have never seen evidence of
any serious thought among any Inuit leaders from Greenland, Canada
or Alaska about such a prospect.
6.Published as Our Common Future: Report of the World Commission on
Environment and Development, Oxford University Press, 1987. The
section referred to ends chapter 4.
7.The government did not have everything its own way. On October 1,
1987, Nunavut MP Thomas Suluk, a government member, himself long
immersed in Nunavut land claims and the development of a Nunavut
government before his election to Parliament, gave a thoughtful
speech putting the case for Nunavut clearly. But this was during the
debate on the Meech Lake constitutional accord and the speech was
little noted by press or public except for his hedged support for
that accord. It was noticed within the government, however.
8.For a discussion of Nunavut and the similar patterns elsewhere in
the northern world, see my “Politics, Development and Conservation
in the International North,” CARC Policy Paper No. 2, Canadian
Arctic Resources Committee, Ottawa, 1986, and my brief article, “The
Challenge of Northern Peoples, in Northern Perspectives Vol. 15, No.
2,Canadian Arctic Resources Committee, Ottawa, MayJune, 1987.
This material © The Northern Review and Peter Jull, 1997 and
earlier. Reproduction of this document is permitted provided this
notice remains intact. The Northern Review would like to be informed
of any large volume copying of this document. This material
originally appeared in The Northern Review. |
