FUTURE IMPERFECT

A controversial report on the prospects for Inuit society strikes a nerve in the N.W.T.

QITDLARSSUAQ, the fabled Inuk shaman of another age, is said to have led a small band of followers on a great journey, far from Auyuittuq, the home of their forefathers on Baffin Island, to the land of the Akukiktut in northern Greenland. Theirs was a sea-ice odyssey into the unknown, a lifelong search for a new future among new peoples and new ideas.

 The Inuit of today face a similar Journey-a journey through time into the 21st century. Indeed, it has been scarcely a lifetime since a world not unlike Qildlarssuaq's vanished forever in a sudden whirlwind of modern technology and notions too fantastic to be believed. But where the journey of today will end remains a much-disputed question.

 This issue of Northern Perspectives begins with one view of that rather uncertain destination. In 1986, as part of a review of Canadian demographics to the year 2025, the Department of National Health and Welfare commissioned a series of multidisciplinary research studies by scholars from across Canada. The task of describing the social and economic changes engendered by the resettlement of a rapidly expanding Inuit population into permanent communities was undertaken by Dr Colin Irwin of the Dalhousie University Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology. Dr Irwin's final report, Lords of the Arctic: Wards of the State, was released in the fall of 1988. It painted a bleak picture of Inuit society some 40 years hence: "Most of the Inuit living in the Arctic in the year 2025 will probably be second-generation wards of the state, living out their lives in 'arctic ghettos' plagued by increasing rates of crime", wrote Dr Irwin. "As long as current trends persist, most of the people living in the Arctic with professional and university qualifications will be white, and they will continue to dominate the higher levels of management in both the private and public sectors. This racially distinct minority can be expected to be the focus of growing racial tensions between themselves and the majority Inuit population. "

Hard-hitting as the report may have been, its general conclusions were, to quote Dr Irwin himself, "not particularly new". New or not, reaction to a leaked draft of the report on the part of the Government of the Northwest Territories was revealed as not only critical but openly hostile. In a letter to Minister of National Health and Welfare Jake Epp, N.W.T. Government Leader Dennis Patterson termed the report "a collection of unsubstantiated opinion" and suggested that the department "review more carefully the impact of recent developments on the future of the Inuit before officially releasing the study you have initiated."

CARC's purpose in presenting Dr Irwin's findings is neither to endorse them wholeheartedly nor to condemn in toto the current administration of government programs in the Northwest Territories; rather, it is to present both the report and debate surrounding it to a larger audience in a manner that will permit and encourage critical review. To that end we have reproduced the summary report, in edited form, on the following pages. In addition, we posed five questions based on the report to Mr Patterson and to the Tungavik Federation of Nunavut, the organization representing Inuit of the eastern Arctic in land claim negotiations. The responses we received from each, along with a brief rebuttal by Dr Irwin, are included in this issue.

Not everyone shares Dr Irwin's pessimistic assessment of the Inuit future, but most would agree that the path ahead is uncertain, the choices difficult. It seems clear, too, that at least some of the policies adopted in the past have proved inadequate and ill-suited to the needs of Inuit. While prudence may be the lesson reamed through such experience, it must not be allowed to override the urgent need for imaginative solutions to the disparities and cruel dilemmas that have for too long distinguished Canada's native North.

 A national commitment to share the modest aspirations of aboriginal northerners is required, for the journey of the Inuit is very much a journey for all Canadians.