Nunavut: Preparing for Self-Government

Introduction
In Canada in the early 1990s, it has been hard to avoid two dramas unfolding. Abroad, the Soviet Union and its satellites, like Humpty Dumpty of old, have crashed from supremacy and shattered into numerous and ungainly parts. The prospects of the monolith re-emerging, even in part, appear about as remote as Humpty regaining his perch. The violence attending the frenzy of boundary drawing and rejigging in eastern Europe has been particularly sobering for we Canadians, conditioned as we are by the awareness that Quebec/Rest-of-Canada relations must always be re-invented.

At home, the post-Meech Lake grope towards a new constitutional reform package has, along with periodic Supreme Court of Canada pronouncements and the disturbances at Oka and Akwesasne, generated new urgency and credibility for aboriginal demands that Canada recognize the rights of aboriginal peoples to self-government. Politicians of all political stripes agree that the national referendum of October 26, should not be interpreted as a rejection of aboriginal self-government. The precise legal scope of the self-government rights that will be embedded in a reformed constitution can be the subject of endless speculation. There can be little doubt, however, that the obligations imposed on the federal and provincial governments to negotiate in good faith will compel elected leaders in Canada to devote appreciable effort to addressing aboriginal grievances and proposals in the coming decades.

In the North, the Inuit of the Nunavut area are well on their way to achieving a peaceable reconfiguration of the political boundaries of the Northwest Territories: the new territory, called "Nunavut", will come into existence in April 1999. The creation of an Inuit-dominated territory in the eastern and central Arctic will represent the first major change in the political map of Canada since Newfoundland's entry into Confederation in 1949. The process has been successful despite formidable obstacles. These have included, among others:

• concern during the Trudeau government era that Nunavut would represent an "ethnic state" that would serve as some kind of template or test run for separatist opinion in Quebec;
• a worry that an Inuit-dominated government in Nunavut might be drawn into foreign policy "adventurism" towards Inuit living in other parts of the circumpolar North, especially in Greenland with its Home Rule Government and, by Canadian standards, left-wing politics;
• a fear that any boundary approximating the treeline would cater to feelings of ethnic solidarity among the Inuit of the Northwest Territories (NWT) at the expense of more practical lines of transportation and communication; this fear was acute among residents of the Mackenzie Valley (what if Nunavut boundaries placed the Inuvialuit -- western arctic Inuit -- in Nunavut and cut the Mackenzie Valley hinterland off from the Beaufort Sea coastline and littoral?);
• economic concerns, particularly in Yellowknife, that division of the NWT would be "bad for business" in every sense of the term (would Nunavut erode investment confidence, jeopardize head of fice Government of the Northwest Territories jobs in Yellowknife, and deflect public sector subsidies from Ottawa away from the western part of the NWT to the Nunavut area?);
• bureaucratic preference for the status quo both in Ottawa and in Yellowknife. The status quo was steadily (if unspectacularly) being reinforced by the devolution of authority from Ottawa to the GNWT and the strengthening of the administrative capacity and competence of the GNWT;
• opposition from Dene and Metis to various boundary scenarios which would divide the Inuit and Dene/Metis homelands; this opposition tended to negate ideological support for the self-determination of aboriginal peoples;
• official federal land claims policy which, during the entire period in which Inuit were organizing for the creation of Nunavut (and, at least formally, continuing in the present), precluded the direct negotiation of northern constitutional change at the land claims table;
• an assessment inside the federal government, for much of the 1980s, that the real priorities and opportunities for settling northern land claims and related aboriginal issues rested in Yukon and the Mackenzie Valley; slow, cautious negotiations insisted on by the organizations representing Nunavut Inuit for land claims purposes (first Inuit Tapirisat of Canada, since 1982 the Tungavik Federation of Nunavut (TFN)) tended to confirm this assessment;
• a belief that the North in general, and the Nunavut area in particular, had little clout in national politics (the "how many votes are there in Nunavut" syndrome); while the marginality of northern political influence may be by and large true, it must not be forgotten that in the late 1970s, Inuit Tapirisat of Canada was successful in establishing a separate constituency for the portion of the NWT north of the treeline (the riding of Nunatsiaq); this guaranteed Inuit a voice in parliament, a voice that was especially helpful in establishing Nunavut at crucial points in the early 1 980s when Peter Ittinuar was Member of Parliament
• most importantly perhaps, the difficulties and frustrations internal to Inuit communities and representative organizations in maintaining interest in and commitment to Nunavut during periods of time when other projects appeared to offer far brighter prospects.

In light of these and other obstacles, it is remarkable that Inuit have been able to secure such success with respect to Nunavut. There are probably countless explanations for that success, some of them no doubt highly personalized. (As the late President Kennedy was fond of saying: "Victory has many fathers, but defeat is an orphan".) The following list represents some of the factors that have contributed to the achievements of the Inuit of Nunavut in securing a government of their own -- factors which, adapted and applied to the immensely variant circumstances and conditions of aboriginal peoples living in other parts of the world, might be of relevance outside the Canadian North.

The "KIS" Factor
In all struggles vigorously and tenaciously contested, it is always wise to "keep it simple". The Nunavut proposal has always enjoyed the virtue of being straightforward and understandable, even though its strategic objective was to redefine political structures over a large swath of territory. The legal status and powers of the Nunavut territorial government have been consistently proposed in conventional and familiar terms. (Only intrinsically important matters, such as the place of Inuktitut and the delineation of boundaries, were detailed.) While other aboriginal groups have sometimes used terms such as "sovereignty" which have emotive impact within the wobbly confines of Canadian federalism, Nunavut has been put forward in terms that have been studiously non-threatening.

April 1990: Paul Quassa, President of TFN, signs
the Nunavut Agreement-in-Principle, flanked by Tom
Siddon, Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern
Development, and Dennis Patterson, Leader of the
Government of the NWT.

Being Consistent
The major Inuit organizations representing the Inuit of Nunavut have made the creation of a Nunavut Territory and government a consistent touchstone of their political, land claims, and other communications and research efforts. Virtually every presentation prepared and delivered by TFN before parliamentary committees, the NWT Legislative Assembly, task forces and working groups, university seminars and the like, in the last ten years have emphasized the fixed objective of creating Nunavut and its inseverability from the settlement of land claims in the eastern and central Arctic.

Don't Take No for an Answer
The Inuit have been working on Nunavut for the better part of twenty years. When the Nunavut Territory Act comes into effect in 1999, it will have been almost a quarter of a century since the launching of the first formal Nunavut proposal. Even those who first greeted the idea of a single cohesive aboriginal people taking control of a territorial government with alarm have grown accustomed to the possibility. While the passage of time imposes measurable organizational and personal tests on the committed advocates of a political project, persistence pays ample dividends. In addition to reducing fears of the unknown, it convinces the sceptical that you really want what you say you want, and it persuades the unsympathetic that there may be no real alternative in any event. This second point has been a convincing one with respect to Nunavut. Since the conclusion of the TFN Agreement-in-Principle in 1990, those people in the North and inside the federal government who have been unsettled by Nunavut have been unable to suggest any workable alternatives.

Don't Write Off the People Who
May Have Good Reason to Resist
From the outset, Nunavut has had sympathizers and supporters in unlikely quarters. In 1979, a number of Dene/Metis members of the NWT Legislative Assembly offered critical support in the preparation of a NWT-wide plebiscite on division. One-time NWT Legislative Assembly member Bob MacQuarrie, representing a Yellowknife constituency with little if anything to gain from division, chaired a committee in the early 1980s (ironically entitled the "Unity Committee") which reported back to the Legislative Assembly that the emperor had no clothes, (that is, there was no political unity in the NWT and the Inuit were not interested in developing it.) Perhaps most graphically, in both the April 1982 plebiscite on the principle of division and the May 1992 plebiscite on the boundary for division, significant numbers of residents of the Mackenzie Valley voted in favour of realizing the Nunavut goal. This level of support has spoken well of the sophistication and good will of the electorate of the Mackenzie Valley; this support also came about as a result of on-going efforts by Inuit leaders to avoid inflammatory or offensive characterizations of Mackenzie Valley residents uneasy at the prospect of division.

April 1992: James Eetoolook, Acting President of TFN, and Tom Siddon, Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development sign the Nunavut Political Accord. John Amagoalik, constitutional advisor to TFN. and Dennis Patterson look on.

Making the Best of Unforeseen Opportunities
It is doubtful if the commitments to the creation of Nunavut that have been made through the TFN Agreement-in-Principle and the TFN Final Agreement, as elaborated through the Nunavut Political Accord, could have been achieved when they were, in the absence of external developments which rebounded to the benefit of Inuit. In the period following the conclusion of the TFN Agreement-in-Principle in April 1990, two developments occurred outside Nunavut that tangibly increased the odds of Inuit achieving their political goal of creating a Nunavut Territory and government. The first was the collapse of the Dene/Metis final land claims agreement amidst much rancour and confusion, and the consequent splintering into regional groupings of Dene and Metis for land claims negotiations. As a result of this development, both the Government of Canada and the GNWT felt added incentive to keep things on the rails with TFN negotiations. In Yellowknife particularly, there was concern that the total breakdown of all land claims negotiations in the NWT might trigger open-ended dissatisfaction with all the institutions and processes of government and engender a climate of escalating ethnically defined ill-will.

The second significant development was the stand-off between the Oka Mohawks and the police and armed forces of Quebec and Canada. The stand-off persuaded many Canadiarts that relations between aboriginal peoples and other Canadians were in a state of deepening crisis. A federal government desperate for a good news story of significant magnitude somewhere on the aboriginal horizon, "got religion" on Nunavut. The outburst of favourable international publicity that attended the December 1991 announcement of the conclusion of the TFN Final Agreement provided telling testimony of the good judgment of Tom Siddon, Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, and senior departmental officials in promoting Nunavut as a good news story in a season of stormy weather.

Taking Risks
Perhaps the single most important factor contributing towards the creation of a Nunavut Territory has been the willingness of the Inuit leadership to take calculated risks at crucial points in the process. The most obvious risks taken involved agreement to participate in NWT-wide plebiscites in 1982 and 1992 on the principle and boundary of division. In both plebiscites (despite being outnumbered almost two-to-one by residents of the Mackenzie Valley), Inuit organizations were successful in persuading Nunavut residents to turn out in overwhelming numbers to vote their support; they were also successful in encouraging a significant portion of Mackenzie Valley residents to cast their votes for Nunavut. Narrow overall NWT-wide majorities in each vote constituted massive moral and political victories for Inuit.

In addition to the dramatic risks of the plebiscites, a number of other significant risks were taken when pragmatic circumstances dictated their value. In 1979, for example, Inuit Tapirisat of Canada reversed an established policy of ignoring the GNWT when it became obvious that, considerations of ideological purity notwithstanding, a successful coalition to secure Nunavut would require active support within the NWT Legislative Assembly. Similarly, in the key negotiations that resulted in the December 1992 TFN Final Agreement, TFN negotiators indicated that no complete land claims agreement would be concluded, despite over ten years of intensive negotiations and the conclusion of a 370-page agreement-in-principle, unless a reliable commitment was made on Nunavut. In hindsight, Nunavut may seem to have an air of inevitability about it; the reality is that what has been accomplished has only been achieved out of a willingness to go to the wall for essential political obiectives.

Where Do We Go From Here
In April 1992, the Nunavut Political Accord concluded by negotiators for TFN, the Government of Canada, and the GNWT, set out a practical plan for the creation of a Nunavut Territory and the implementation of a Nunavut Government. In May 1992 the majority of voters in the NWT voted in favour of a boundary for the division of the NWT, with a massive turn out and "Yes" vote in the Nunavut area. In the summer of this year, the federal cabinet confirmed its determination to proceed with legislation to create Nunavut in concert with legislation to ratify the TFN Final Agreement. Many points of detail will require unstinting and imaginative effort in the years leading up to 1999 if Nunavut is to be a success on the ground as well as on paper. Nevertheless, the only remaining hurdles of consequence are the approval of the federal cabinet and forrnal statutory support of parliament, likely in the late spring or early summer of 1993. Assuming all goes well, the turn of the century will witness the induction of the newest charter member of the Canadian federal/provincial/territorial club: a Nunavut Territory open to all Canadians but with a distinctively Inuit face.

John Merritt is an Ottawa-based consultant and member of CARC. John has for many years advised Inuit organizations on political and constitutional issues.