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Jull, Peter --- "'Nations with Whom We Are Connected' - Indigenous Peoples and Canada's Political System, Part 2" [2001] AUIndigLawRpr 26; (2001) 6(3) Australian Indigenous Law Reporter 1

Commentary

‘Nations with Whom We Are Connected’^[1]
— Indigenous Peoples and Canada’s Political System[2]

Part 2[3]

Peter Jull^[4]

3. Building Nunavut

Following the 1982 referendum supporting Nunavut, the Northwest Territories (NWT) Legislative Assembly created two bodies, a Western Constitutional Forum (WCF) for Denendeh and a Nunavut Constitutional Forum (NCF). They were made up of elected Members of that Assembly (MLAs) to reflect its cultural diversity, plus elected leaders of the major Indigenous associations in Denendeh and Nunavut respectively. Again one sees the implicit view that an elected legislature by itself, and even with genuine Indigenous leaders now among its members, did not sufficiently represent Indigenous aspirations or society. (This view was made explicit in a talk to the two forums together in February 1985 by federal Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Developments (DIAND) Minister Crombie, a former teacher of constitutional politics.[5])

From the start the WCF apparently hoped to hold back rampaging Nunavut while harnessing its momentum for their own more difficult process. They viewed the NCF as having committed itself to move in tandem with them. The NCF, however, had no such view and simply wanted to create Nunavut as soon as possible, having seen the 1982 referendum as a needless delay. NCF insouciance and WCF suspicion proved corrosive. Things began well. In late 1982 the leading NWT members and Indigenous leaders visited Ottawa and lobbied cabinet ministers and others for constitutional progress, especially on issues of resource revenues and block funding. Ottawa was astounded. The northern whites and natives had been at each other’s throats for years and here they were now, all friendly and mutually supportive. Nobody was in any doubt that this was a new era in the North.

Before the 1979 election the NWT had been one huge federal electoral riding. Now it was split so that the Inuit area including the Western Arctic could elect its own member. Peter Ittinuar, an able and intelligent Inuk from Rankin Inlet, won the seat as an NDP candidate.[6] He was articulate and backed by good staff work and research, so his initiatives were effective. His office became an Inuit outpost in Ottawa. It would be hard to overstate its importance. During the January 1981 Constitutional negotiations with Chrétien and the Trudeau government, his office played a crucial role despite a reluctant national NDP leader. More generally, a scattered people in the most remote areas of Canada suddenly had Ottawa access and could have problems and aspirations taken up with politicians and officials.[7]

Canadians accept that particular circumstances such as a distinct culture or region, or huge distances, should allow the usual representation measure by population numbers to be varied to provide effective electoral representation. On the other hand, when Brian Mulroney had half the Inuit of Quebec’s Arctic coast in his huge southern St Lawrence River based riding in the mid-1980s, he did not even bother to visit their region during the 1984 election campaign which made him Prime Minister. But in late 1982, Peter Ittinuar used his seat in an unusual way: he defected to Trudeau’s Liberals in return for federal support for Nunavut, announced at the same time as his switch.[8] Thereafter, Ittinuar was able to play a valuable role within the governing party on Inuit constitutional matters, not least when sitting beside Trudeau during the 1980s First Ministers Conferences. (At other times Trudeau appointed both an NWT and a Quebec Inuk to Canada’s Senate — an unelected job for life. Both Senators Willie Adams and Charlie Watt have provided valuable access to the national political process for all Indigenous peoples).

The NCF chose a white lawyer fluent in the Inuit language as chair. Chairperson Dennis Patterson, elected in Nunavut’s main town, Iqaluit, was also NWT Minister of Aboriginal Rights and Constitutional Development and Minister of Education and later, Premier (Government Leader). This was politically deft, disarming anxieties among Canadian public, media and officials about Inuit racial separatism. Inuit reasoned that a lawyer would be skilled in the legal and constitutional work ahead. Inuit leader John Amagoalik, recognised as the longtime guiding spirit of the Nunavut movement, was the other key NCF figure.

The NCF’s first year’s work was frenetic. Forum meetings were open to the media. At a meeting in Tuktoyaktuk it was agreed to welcome the Inuvialuit to NCF, a move which upset the WCF. The question of whether the Inuvialuit would be part of Nunavut or part of the Western NWT, and the precise location of the Nunavut boundary vis à vis Dene, would become the most vexing (and one of two serious) problems facing Nunavut. The Western NWT was determined to keep the Inuvialuit homeland of the Mackenzie Delta and Beaufort Sea coast, not least for their proven oil and gas reserves. Some Inuvialuit leaders were playing hardball politics, more eager to push the Western NWT into offering them greater future autonomy within the NWT than wishing to be a minority region in Nunavut’s far west.

The main work of the NCF was to develop a constitutional plan or framework which would both win federal government approval and express Inuit needs and aspirations. Canada, its government and public had been obsessed with Quebec separatism for 20 years. Almost anything which was seen as ethnically or culturally defined, or which was centred on non-WASP[9] Canadians, attracted irrational public fears. For instance, when Canadian Inuit became active in the Inuit Circumpolar Conference from the early 1980s, MPs and others were fretful that this Inuit internationalism was really a move towards a separate Arctic nation-state, despite the fact that non-Indigenous Canadians themselves were enthusiastic members of the Commonwealth of Nations and the Francophonie. Apart from occasional wishing out loud by idealistic youth or visionary elders, Inuit in Canada never seriously contemplated external boundary changes. (Also, Arctic Quebec Inuit, like Quebec’s nine First Nations, would prefer to remain in Canada than stay within an independent new Quebec.) But so inflamed was Canadian sentiment, and so opposed to Nunavut were some federal officials, that some demonising of Dene and Inuit as separatists was inevitable. So Inuit knew that they had to make their position very clear — that is, that they were trying to join Canada as full participants.

Inuit wanted to regain maximum control of their lands and seas, wrest political and administrative control of their communities and daily lives from outsiders, fill as many jobs as possible with Inuit (and prepare Inuit to hold such jobs), and have a government strong and clever enough to deal effectively with powerful outside interests such as the oil industry and the federal government. They were quite willing to be flexible on details but these goals were fundamental. The White Man’s governance had been so intrusive and disruptive since the 1950s that Inuit were unenthusiastic about any government and were (and would remain) anxious that any new authority in their daily lives must be different and much more Inuit friendly with many more Inuit decision makers and staff. Until the Nunavut government achieves that — and education and training will not catch up for some years — they will not stop worrying. That being said, Nunavut has now attracted many young and not so young non-Inuit who are committed to Inuit goals and to acquiring Inuit language and culture.

There were other difficult issues. Nunavut has a very small population, only about 27,000 people. In theory it would take only a few major development projects to overwhelm the Inuit in their homeland. Of course, not everyone chooses Arctic living and even resource projects now fly staff in and out from Southern Canada for multiweek shifts. To deal with such threats Inuit had earlier proposed 10 years residency for voting in Nunavut. This caused uproar in Southern Canada and was quickly abandoned, although a period of two years residency seemed acceptable to governments and others at the time. Also, the idea of isolating development workers from Inuit communities was proposed in the key document, Building Nunavut,[10] but immediately drew fire from Canada’s national newspaper, The Globe and Mail. The NCF had drawn on active precedents in other small Northern jurisdictions including Norway, Iceland, the Faroes, Shetland — all of them European peoples. Inuit did not want their society and culture swamped by outsiders, with all the woes which come with transient male workforces as had occurred in communities in Nunavut and elsewhere in the past with military bases, resource extraction crews and the like. Inuit in Greenland and North Slope Alaska also worried about such problems, the former legislating strongly to control the entry of outside labour. Nunavut thus found itself confronting the liberal political ideology of a modern ‘first world’ country.

The Canadian government also faced the issue. It insisted that the Inuit land and sea claims be negotiated separately from creation of Nunavut as a self-governing territory. The stated reason was that a government must be open to all, whereas claims were exclusive to Inuit (and the descendants of Inuit). Inuit leaders suspected that there were other reasons, especially a lack of federal government commitment to a Nunavut government and a means for government to play off one process against the other. Certainly the principles stated were often ignored and Inuit had to fight every inch of the way until both claims and Nunavut government legislation finally were passed and became law simultaneously in June 1993. However, Inuit were interested in outcomes more than philosophy so they did not allow government to distract them. Because the negotiations went on from 1976 to 1993, with much implementation planning to follow until 1999 when Nunavut became the government of one fifth of Canada’s total land area, Inuit had constantly to educate and persuade new ministers, new parliamentary committees and new prime ministers of the value and practicality of their Nunavut vision. In every case the problem was to win people over from a simplistic version of liberal democratic ideology to an understanding that the Inuit homeland was distinct and different.

For instance, Inuit wanted collective ownership of land. Indeed, there was almost no private land in all Nunavut. It was Crown land. The lack of property rights or use rights for Indigenous peoples — that is, the refusal of the White Man’s legal and political system to recognise peoples who plainly owned, occupied and derived their food and livelihoods from the lands and waters of what is now Canada — was the underlying problem in Indigenous–white relations. In a sense the whole Indigenous claims process has been an attempt to recover something of what European settlers and their governments took away.

In the case of Nunavut this involved the sea as much as the land. Government experts and especially the federal fisheries department were outraged at Inuit demands for ownership, use, management and restrictions of the sea. However, Inuit were a maritime people. They not only lived from the sea — especially from seals, walrus, small whales (beluga and narwhal) and polar bears — but they used its frozen surface for most of the year for travel, as a platform for hunting at the ice edge or by seal breathing holes, and for situating their hunting camps. Here European law and especially International sea law clashed with Inuit needs and practice.[11] There was some wonderful hypocrisy. The Canadian government took Inuit sea claims documents to international conferences to demand recognition of Canadian ownership and control of marine areas in the Arctic but the same documents were rejected at home by the same government when presented as Inuit claims. Eventually this story had a happy ending. The Canadian government agreed from 1986 to accept Inuit sea claims in principle, overruling its fisheries department in order to move the Nunavut claim forward — and other claims looming in Labrador with Inuit and in British Columbia with Indian nations such as the Nuu-chah-nulth.[12] Inuit already strongly advocated maximum Canadian control of the oceans; for example, they wanted to limit ships using their ice filled waters to annual supply vessels to minimise the constant threat of accident and oil spill. They also wanted strong enforceable safety standards. At the 1989 Inuit Circumpolar Conference assembly in Sisimiut, Greenland, much of the corridor talk was about the Exxon Valdez disaster, which took place in non-Arctic waters with perfect weather, full daylight and no ice.

Indigenous peoples across the NWT had general hunting rights whereas others did not. Outsiders or white residents could apply for some strictly limited local hunting rights if game was plentiful. So the Northern and other claims settlements did not establish anything new in that respect. Indeed, almost the only aspect of Indian treaties which had been upheld by courts in the early post-1945 era was the right of Indigenous peoples to hunt and fish. Some of the greatest Canadian Indigenous cases, for example, Sparrow,[13] Marshall[14] and Powley,[15] are about persistence of such rights previously thought not to exist. However, Inuit led the successful push for a Constitutional amendment to state clearly that Indigenous rights established in the past, present or future in any treaty or land claims agreement took precedence over the rest of the Constitutional Charter enacted in the Constitution Act 1982.[16] In other words, non-Inuit could not go to court and unravel Inuit rights on equality grounds. Such an amendment would probably not have been accepted by Canadians or their governments in the fundamentalist equal rights era post-1945, but by the 1980s it was unexceptional. That is, the explicit and implicit negotiation of Indigenous rights and interests, which went on daily in the press and in countless meetings, was changing the political culture of Canada.

Nunavut would have, therefore, a dual constitution. Like all other parts of Canada there would be a legislated framework for the governance of the region, the Nunavut Act, sc 1993. This would create a government for which all residents who were Canadian citizens could vote. (During the first Arctic elections in the NWT in the mid-1960s, sometimes the only French or English speaking person in a village who was linguistically qualified to be an election officer was, for example, Belgian, and therefore could not legally do the job.) But alongside that Act was the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement Act, sc 1993 which contained many elements previously exclusive to governments and contained other elements which restricted governments. The negotiated Inuit–federal government Agreement thereby enacted created a number of new bodies in which Inuit appointed half the members through the successor to their claims organisation, Nunavut Tunngavik Inc (NTI). These bodies work with government to manage the lands and seas, resources and development, and to plan future use. Because this constitutional framework is legislated at the federal level, it is not susceptible to change by any future Nunavut Legislative Assembly, even if such an Assembly one day has a majority of non-Inuit members. Also, the Agreement is further reinforced and protected by the Constitution Act 1982. its provisions having the status of constitutional law (s 35) and being immune to non-Inuit ‘equal rights’ lawsuits (s 25).

This is a new type of constitution in Canada. Such structures also apply to Northern Quebec (where Inuit and Cree signed their 1975 claims settlement), the Western NWT (where different claims apply now or will apply to other regions when negotiated), to parts of Labrador (under Inuit and Innu), and to the Yukon. However, in Nunavut the claims area and territory are coterminous and the whole constitutional package was negotiated simultaneously. Despite the distinctions in Ottawa separating the two processes, they were always one to Inuit.

Inuit were not merely individual citizens who exercised a right to vote in territorial or federal elections. They had further rights as the Indigenous people of the Nunavut region and exercised these through NTI. Three regional bodies hold the selected areas in Nunavut on their behalf, who, combined with NTI, give them special benefits and rights as trustees of the lands and waters of their entire ancient homeland. NTI membership is not only for Inuit living today but all Inuit born in the future will become members automatically. In other words, an individual rights ideology prevailed through the Nunavut Act and collective rights through the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement Act 1993.

Ottawa, for its part, had faced a difficult situation. While determined not to recognise or create ethnically defined governments (despite the continued existence and growing roles of Indian First Nations governments on Indian lands), it had to acknowledge that Indigenous peoples were different. The highest Canadian court had recognised this in Calder[17] and other decisions. So Ottawa used a sort of sleight of hand or self-deception to reach a solution. Inuit would have their Indigenous rights recognised through one Act while the fiction of Canada’s non-ethnic and territorially defined political arrangements was upheld through another Act. Nevertheless, today Ottawa is negotiating self-government at 80 different ‘tables’ with Indigenous peoples.

Such juggling of realities is not unique to Canada. The Greenland Home Rule Act 1979 of the Danish Folketing insists that the Danish realm is one and indivisible but also acknowledges some special rights for Greenlanders in respect of their huge island territory. The Sami are able to see that their Sami parliaments in Norway, Sweden and Finland are Sami defined political bodies but other Scandinavian citizens can see these as simply special corporate entities which work with the national government in relation to certain matters like many other national organisations. The Norwegian reindeer herders association, NRL, is also a Sami-only body, one with extensive rights for a regionally important industry. But there are also many other industry bodies; for example, the national fishers’ organisation. Or to take another Canadian example, one may argue that Quebec is only a geographic region in which the population majority happen to be of French descent, so that language and culture reflect that Francophone inheritance, while many Québecois insist that their province is one of the deux nations (two nations) which make up Canada. Such latter persons regard Canada’s constitutional life as an ongoing process of negotiation between two nations, joined recently by Indigenous nations as a third. Indeed, some Quebec nationalists view the addition of Indigenous nations to the Canadian constitutional mix as a ploy by Anglophones to undermine Quebec’s territorial integrity and fundamental nationhood as one of two Canadas!

Canadian constitutional policymakers, including the notoriously anti-ethnocentric Trudeau, were quite ready to accept an Inuit self-governing homeland, Nunavut, in fact, while continuing to deny ethnic polities in theory. One might almost say — and many Canadian thinkers would — that such pragmatism and measured muddle has been the essence of Canadian constitutional culture from the days when the British Parliament included Edmund Burke and others debating political arrangements for Quebec and the future Canada. In their practical way Inuit understood this aspect of Canadian culture and, having watched the unjustified uproar over a ‘Dene nation’, were careful not to make the same political mistake. Similarly, they avoided making an explicit sovereign claim to their homeland or its resources. They were astute constitutional practitioners — they secured de facto sovereignty of the total area of their homeland while more demanding and doctrinaire Indigenous groups in Canada have failed to achieve any claims or political settlement at all.[18]

Another matter illustrated by Nunavut is how process is an integral part of Indigenous and Canadian political life. Canada’s process-oriented political culture has been noted by many experts at home and abroad.[19] This has enabled Canadians to put difficult issues, such as Nunavut in particular and recognition of Indigenous rights generally, into a process and expect a resulting agreement, compromise or consensus in the fullness of time. This approach works, by and large. It is also the accustomed method of deliberation among most Indigenous cultures with their high regard for individual autonomy within the group and their reluctance to impose outcomes.

Nunavut in itself, and Nunavut as part of the wider debates on the future of the North and as part of Canada’s whole post-1960 experience of Indigenous recognition and policy reform, have proceeded as a sort of multilateral negotiation. Although some of it has occurred around or across a table, much of it has occurred through news media and various public processes. This has not been managed and to the extent that governments tried to manage it, they failed. Of course, government decision makers made all sorts of firm and final decisions and announced positions, but these had a habit of being quickly undone by events. Rather, all sides, including the general public, were learning as they went along. Few if any knew where they would end and, although certain goals have been achieved, the journey and form of the result have been surprising. The Indigenous leadership and organisations (but certainly not the whole Indigenous public), governments, most politicians (until Reform/Canadian Alliance appeared) and the informed public and national élites learned a great deal and moved a very long way in their assumptions and notions of good relations with Indigenous peoples. Most people (except the Indigenous disadvantaged) changed their views of Canadian society, culture, history and the national community. The country, once a byword with foreigners for claustrophobic earnestness, began to feel larger and enhanced. One may lament the profusion of books of uneven quality (sometimes seeming as if anyone who had known an Indian or Inuk could publish a memoir) but the fact that there was so much demand for literature, films and other insights shows the depth of commitment of Canadians to recognition and reform — or ‘reconciliation’, in Australian and South African parlance.

4. Indigenous internationalism

Specific international influences have been important in Canada’s recent Indigenous policy and political evolution. For instance, American comments about Canadian failings towards Inuit in early Cold War years were annoying, even painful. The criticism by Americans, now present in the Arctic, hurried Canada’s establishment of its Northern Affairs department in 1953.

Decolonisation of the former British Empire provided constant images on Canada’s TV news of dark skinned peoples fighting for freedom from the White Man and then winning it. The Union Jack was lowered and new flags raised to replace it all over the world. If poor fussy old England was doing ‘the right thing’, how much more should an idealistic New World country like Canada do?

The riots, violence and dysfunction of black–white relations in America especially affected Canadian television watchers who knew or felt close to those cities. Could such things really not happen in Canada? Continuing failure by governments to address Indigenous urban needs — or sheer bloody mindedness by governments refusing moral and financial responsibility — may be Canada’s greatest social failure. (The other is the Mid-North, that is, provincial northlands which often escape media notice except in special cases as with the self-destructive children in Labrador Indigenous villages.)[20]

Even in the early 1970s Canadian governments typically assumed that their political culture and way of life were universal, that is, objective absolutes which would benefit ‘unfortunate’ and ‘backward’ people like Inuit and Indians once they stopped resisting and adopted them. The word ‘acculturation’ had appeared often in Ottawa memos — a desirable process which would heal Indigenous peoples when they became ‘more like us’. Very specific influences and inspirations for Canada were the Alaska Native claims settlement negotiated by Indigenous leaders with Congress in Washington becoming law in 1971, followed by Inuit Greenland’s home rule movement resulting in political autonomy from May 1979. However, a more active interaction began. In November 1973 the Arctic Peoples Conference in Copenhagen brought Inuit, Indian and Métis notables from Northern Canada, and Sami from the three Scandinavian countries, together with Greenland Inuit assisted by the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA).[21] This conference is usually considered the beginning of ‘Indigenous internationalism’ — the co-operation of Indigenous peoples with each other across or beyond national borders to share ideas, information and inspiration, to concert moral and political influence on national governments and international bodies, and to establish better international standards for Indigenous peoples in matters of shared or universal interest. The contribution of Canada’s Indigenous peoples to Indigenous internationalism include: raising the level of Indigenous rights observance by nation-state governments, establishing universal Indigenous rights instruments (notably Convention concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries[22] and the United Nations Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples[23]), strengthening environmental safeguards for Indigenous livelihoods and resources, opposing environmental campaigns directed at themselves (for example, animal rights and anti-whaling), sharing experience for strengthening language and culture, and for dealing with social crises (such as alcohol abuse) and responding to specific disasters (Chernobyl radiation fallout in Scandinavian Sápmi or genocide in Guatemala).

At the Copenhagen conference in 1973 the power of contact was evident. Remote and marginalised peoples were represented by young (and one or two older) persons regarded as troublemakers or quixotics at home. They were met in the awe inspiring Christiansborg Palace — for centuries the centre of Danish government — with welcoming Danish hospitality. The representatives were shocked to discover that other people in remote places endured the same tragic and sometimes comic stupidities of the White Man’s governance, and understood perfectly the local and regional issues of social and cultural discrimination, political powerlessness, environment and resource mismanagement by others, and laws erasing centuries of Indigenous rights and use. Here, amid strange languages and manners, a recognition of shared needs and common causes took place — an outcome far more important and less explicit than any possible resolutions. Participants realised that, however marginal and misunderstood they were at home, they were part of a larger Indigenous world in which they could share past victories and mistakes to help each other and to reach public and official audiences who were more understanding and supportive.[24]

There was dramatic irony in the Christiansborg meeting. The buildings and city were dimly lit and poorly heated to conserve oil. Weeks earlier the Danish Prime Minister’s support for Israel in the Arab–Israeli war had caused Arab countries to cut off oil, so Danes were shopping in gloom and wearing extra sweaters. The search for energy by world oil companies and governments in remote regions such as the Circumpolar Arctic increased the pace of Indigenous resistance and self-determination politics. It had helped bring about this very conference.

Two further major developments flowed from the 1973 conference. Chief George Manuel of the Shuswap nation in British Columbia travelled the world and brought together many peoples on a Nuu-chah-nulth reserve at Port Alberni, BC, in late 1975 to found the World Council of Indigenous Peoples (WCIP).[25] Greenland Inuit, Sami, Maori, Australian Aborigines, North American Indians, many Indian peoples from Latin America and others joined together for a week of the most intense discussion, debates and all-hours talking, leavened with shared meals and cultural performances. The level of pain and rage, and difficulties of translation — Norwegian, Spanish and English were the conference languages — made for enormous strain and perhaps only the charismatic presence of the Iroquois spiritual leader Chief Oren Lyons brought peace and calm when explosions threatened. Canadian First Nations were rightly proud that their renowned leader, Chief Manuel, head of the National Indian Brotherhood (later renamed Assembly of First Nations), had achieved so much. He turned the eyes of Indigenous Canada outward, and international contact and studies blossomed. A few years later during Canada’s Indigenous constitutional work, Indian nations found it natural to turn to extensive American Indian legal experience with rights, self-government, tribal sovereignty and constitutional standing (and despite very different American and Canadian constitutional systems).

In 1977, Alaskan Inuit invited Canadian and Greenland Inuit to Alaska’s northernmost point, Barrow, for the first Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC). For a remote and scattered people who had never in history or prehistory been united it was an astounding event.[26] Among other things Inuit adopted the same name, Inuit Circumpolar Conference, for the successor organisation, calling their three yearly meetings ‘general assemblies’. In summer 1980 at the ICC’s second assembly, in Nuuk, Greenland’s proud new home rule capital, Inuit adopted a charter and working principles. While the WCIP had the desperate plight of many Latin American Indian peoples as its central concern, Canadian Inuit demanded that the ICC focus closer to home. Mary Simon of Kuujjuaq (who later became ICC president) explained that Inuit had no experience wrestling with military dictators in hot countries and that such work would require the total effort of any organisation. Simon asked that Inuit focus the ICC on practical matters with liberal democratic governments in Ottawa, Copenhagen and Washington to secure better policies. In 1977 the Alaskan Inuit mayor Eben Hopson Jr had greeted prophetically the initial ICC gathering with the view that achieving maximum self-government in their home regions and the strongest possible marine and coastal environmental protection were the two great tasks for Inuit. Since then political reform at home to achieve greater self-government, and co-operation among themselves and with other peoples and international bodies on environment and sustainable development issues, have been unceasing in all Inuit regions. An ICC compilation of standards or ‘Arctic policy’ was produced over many years through workshops, debate and expert input, resulting in a unique document widely used today outside the Inuit Arctic where its goals have been largely achieved.[27] Inuit international work has grown and flourished (including aid feasibility projects in Melanesia and the Caribbean) and Inuit have been active in many international forums — Mary Simon’s presidency of the ICC achieved such impact in world environment work that she and ICC received significant national, foreign and UN honours. More recently Canadian Inuit-led emergency aid and self-help programs to Russia’s Inuit and other Northern peoples have captured public support at home and abroad.

In 1983 the Alaskan Inuit used the ICC to create the Alaska Native Review Commission (ANRC) with Canadian judge Tom Berger of Mackenzie Valley pipeline fame[28] as Commissioner. The purpose of ANRC was to study the outcomes of the US Congress’ 1970 Indigenous claims settlement and recommend improvements before parts of it were lost through a 20 year sunset clause. Other Indigenous peoples of Alaska soon joined with Inuit and the remarkable inquiry visited the most remote corners of Alaska as well as holding week long, round table sessions with international experts — all open to the public. The final report quickly became an internationally respected book.[29] Its conclusions, presented to the US Congress and to the United Nations, brought about legislative change. The extensive documentation and transcripts resulting from the sessions deposited in US and Canadian libraries remain a potential international resource.

The internationalising of Canadian Indigenous awareness had profound impact on Indigenous political relations at home. Governments had viewed Indigenous regions and peoples as awkward little problems of local backwardness — a case of some ‘primitive’ people being slow to adopt superior white Canadian ways. Canadian southern ways had not been in doubt. Now, however, Indigenous peoples were learning that their problems were typical of many other peoples in other hinterlands far away. They no longer felt like mere powerless minorities facing strong government pressure to conform but drew strength for their resistance from new friends. They could learn tactics, strategies and useful models or precedents from each other’s struggles, as well as support each other. For their part, officials and advisers within governments began to see that imposing ethnocentric formulas on Indigenous peoples was not only morally wrong and politically counter- productive but created resentment, resistance and problems — problems which were predictable across international borders.[30] Some also now saw less special wisdom and more simple bullying in past policy. Comparative study upends policy assumptions and national pomposity.

The impact of the Circumpolar nexus is unquantifiable. The ‘empty North’ is no longer a forgotten backyard but Canada’s window onto a new region of the planet. ‘Illiterate’ and informal hunter-gatherers are de facto ambassadors[31] and practitioners, moving easily and speaking fluently where national governments fear to tread. Arctic political, social, economic and environmental imperatives are those which Indigenous peoples have been long proclaiming, and now ones which national governments — including the most powerful on earth — accept and help enforce. The North is not a mere frozen expanse under which Soviet and American nuclear submarines chase each other but home to living people with rich, old cultures predating European nations and nationalities. It is also a new field of action for Canada as a whole, thanks to Inuit initiative and, unlike other multilateral opportunities, one in which Canada is a significant and increasingly enthusiastic player. Inuit continue to lead Canada on many Arctic and global issues and, in good years, the federal government gives them funding to help. Today, international precedents and contacts are a normal part of Indigenous and governmental work, although Indigenous peoples must continue to press for real action no less than ceremonial events.[32]

Observations and conclusions

Some general observations and conclusions may be made about Canada’s post-1945 experience. These refer to the whole country including, but by no means exclusive to, the specific cases sketched in this paper.

Canada’s Indigenous peoples have used ethnically defined bodies of various sorts to press their political demands on governments. Their objective is always the creation of local and regional bodies governing on a land base. They have not sought national structures like the Sami parliaments or Australia’s ATSIC,[33] or a national treaty,[34] and would not want those unless as a supplement to their own local and regional governing structures. Even the Inuit speaking dialects of a common language withdrew their leaders, staff and advisers to their proper fields of action, power and interest — the four regions of Labrador, Nunavik (Northern Quebec), Nunavut and the Western Arctic — when they had achieved what they could through national organisation.

Indigenous peoples in Canada over the past 35 years have not joined in the existing national political system so much as they have amended it in the process of seeking to deal with grievances, needs and aspirations, and to accommodate new political and constitutional structures. Practical changes have been most evident in vast hinterlands where new structures have been negotiated with land (and sea) claims.[35]

Indigenous peoples have achieved positive and unforeseen outcomes by determination, innocence, occasional bloodymindedness, good fortune and reference to stated Canadian and European ideals — and by gaining the support and capturing the imagination of important elements of non-Indigenous opinion.

The process has sometimes involved formal negotiation — as in land claims, self-government and constitutional work. At other times the process has been a de facto negotiation, through official, Indigenous and general public understanding evolving in public debate, media reportage and comment, specialist and expert reports, court decisions, normal processes of liberal democratic politic life, international co-operation and foreign scrutiny. It has often been angry, bitter and confrontational but rarely violent — its character as negotiation has often been visible only in hindsight.

Canada’s Indigenous peoples have had full access as individuals to elections, parties and the national political system for 40 years at most. Indigenous locations, small numbers, culture and distance from Canadian socio-economic norms make many of them marginal participants today. Elections and elected persons have gained some symbolic moments, a push along for Nunavut, one 1990 constitutional veto and almost no power.

Indigenous peoples have been political collectives vis à vis the White Man in Canada implicitly and explicitly for 400 years (or 1000, strictly speaking) and continue to be so today. Group identity and cohesion have been the main reasons for any benefits and influence they have gained.

The absence of Indigenous people in electoral politics, legislatures or the rest of the dominant political system was undoubtedly a factor in bad policy and neglect. This was a rationale for citizenship funding of Indigenous voices through political associations outside legislatures from the late 1960s.

Many Indigenous people do not vote or participate in political affairs beyond their own community because such activity incurred loss of Indian status in times past. The Indian Act (passed in 1876 and subsequently amended) was designed ‘to get rid of’ Indians, expelling them from their cultures and demanding that they break with their own people to keep so called benefits such as voting rights. Inuit voting in their homeland have had the highest voter turnouts in Canada — much higher than non-Indigenous people.

Today Indigenous people in some areas have discovered the utility of mainstream elections and party politics. They are prepared to use these as an adjunct or follow up to their collective agendas — not as a replacement.

A recent estimate that about 45 (of 301) seats in Ottawa’s House of Commons have electorally significant Indigenous voter numbers may encourage Indigenous electoral activity.

Devastating interference in Indigenous lives and families by government, as well as the policy assault accompanying the religious and social values of the Victorian Age (which lasted till about 1970 in much of Indigenous Canada), have made most Indigenous people wary of governments and governance, even of their own.

Indigenous political entities such as political associations and claims bodies have operated at arm’s length from government and less formally than similar bodies such as the Sami parliaments. Nevertheless, they have not been disadvantaged in comparison with those structures, even renegotiating the national Constitution with Prime Ministers and Premiers.

The rejection to date of political parties in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut in the name of a consensus style of government has not necessarily been an advantage to Indigenous or non-Indigenous voters. A more serious problem may be the importation of Southern Canada executive and administrative styles and structures, the very reason the old NWT alienated Indigenous peoples.

National Indigenous associations in Canada are secondary political forums and have roles delegated to them by primary Indigenous regional or local political communities. National consensus was easy when a few large grievances were widely shared but the situation is more complex and varied today.

Indigenous peoples have had four sequential and overlapping political phases vis à vis government since 1945, namely passive resistance, strong advocacy of rights to deal with wrongs, negotiation of new governing frameworks, and a reform movement (often led by women) demanding more outcomes, less rhetoric and better practice in new frameworks.

Indigenous political strategies and tactics have been too varied to be simply outlined, but participants have noted the opposing styles of the hard-line insistence on sovereignty and reluctance to make pragmatic agreements of some First Nations (notably in Treaty Indian regions such as the Prairie provinces), versus the more accommodating and practical outcomes oriented approach of Northern peoples (notably Inuit). The actual differences have been overstated and the peoples espousing them demonised by others. These perceptions of deep division have spilled into international forums where they have spread an image of ugly Canadians and held overseas peoples hostage to domestic feuds. As a consequence the apparent polarity has become a political fact, mythical or not.

Indigenous nations have experienced a paradoxical relationship with white authority. The dysfunction of many Indigenous communities today results from official aloofness in some matters and interference in others. As a result, Indigenous reformers such as women’s and accountability movements are often driven by unfulfilled hopes of equality and social improvements within Indigenous society following from greater Indigenous–white equality reforms achieved earlier without adequate preparation or capacity building.

Canada’s Indigenous political and constitutional cultures have been evolving steadily in themselves and vis a vis dominant non-indigenous political culture since the mid-1960s. This evolution modifies, gives meaning to and is modified by each new event. Canadian experience misleads those abroad who seek single events or single documents as applicable solutions.

Successful constitutional politics require visible integrity and authenticity of processes to arrive at effective reforms and structures. One might almost say that process becomes product. To date the Canadian constitutional reforms both at national or land claims level have been unique processes with both cultures learning along the way. Whether in future other groups can simply follow a model off the shelf to achieve reform remains to be seen. The drama, colourful personalities and great battles of principle which have characterised Indigenous–white constitutional and political reforms since the 1960s are less likely to be repeated. This may or may not represent progress.

The Indigenous peoples who have achieved most, politically, in post-1945 years have not adopted either/or approaches of high level constitutional change or local community development but have worked at many levels simultaneously. For example, the Nunavut and Nunavik (Arctic Quebec) Inuit achieved change through national constitutional reform, territorial/provincial constitutional reform, court cases, native title claims, interventions in regulatory and inquiry processes, regional and local governance bodies, local study and research efforts (for example, hunting and ecologically sustainable development needs and realities) and community projects.

Canada’s process-oriented mainstream political and constitutional culture — in its use of devices such as political accords — seems to be congenial to resolving deep divisions and bitter past histories in Indigenous–white relations.

More generally, non-Indigenous Canada’s use of impersonal processes and structural reforms has provided intelligent and dispassionate problem solving. The value of this would go unnoticed but for Australia’s recent experience of a negative and emotional public debate conducted largely in one-liners and stereotypes.[36]

Constitutional work has focused the shift in Indigenous policy (and related governmental personnel) from low order welfarism to high policy and politics. From the late 1960s, and especially from the mid-1970s, the focus on Constitutional reform has massively upgraded the importance of Indigenous affairs in the Canadian body politic, while often placing tough demands on poor Indigenous groups lacking personnel to cope with such new official cultures.

The opening of the Constitution to Indigenous peoples in 1978 and the subsequent face to face conferences of Indigenous leaders, the Prime Minister and Premiers, among other important effects, broke the mould of dismal Indigenous–white relations and paternalistic government programming — a psychological breakthrough that provided hope in an Indigenous social reality of too much accumulated hopelessness.

The substance and eloquent rhetoric of historic decisions in the Supreme Court of Canada (beginning with Hall’s famous dissent in Nishga (Calder), through Guerin,[37] Sioui,[38] and Sparrow to Delgamuukw[39] and Marshall) and the recent 3-0 decision of the Ontario Court of Appeal in Powley (in which a people were discovered at last and recognised by the law, while the historical record of governments at all levels was chastised) have provided the moral and legal bedrock of political and constitutional change. The basic theme is respect between and among peoples.

Essentially Canada has now cleared constitutional and political space for Indigenous government as a third order alongside federal and provincial (or territorial) government. It was one of the least contentious parts of the Charlottetown Accord process which failed in a national referendum of 1992. It may now be achieved piecemeal and confirmed through constitutional amendments later.

Federal and even some provincial governments, and the courts, have been leading non-Indigenous opinion on Indigenous policy in recent decades. This is the responsible approach of a nation-state to long standing injustice, deep social ills and to the volatile and disadvantaged national minorities in its midst — an approach aided by greater cross cultural understanding by society and a willingness to face up to the past. Until the mid-1970s or later, governments were reluctant to accept Indigenous agendas or simply ignored them. The basic factor driving all these changes has been Indigenous determination to improve their lot and maintain their culture.

Not all political and policy failures since the 1970s have been governmental. Indigenous peoples themselves have sometimes been unable or unwilling to take up opportunities offered for real change — usually because of longtime powerlessness, disadvantage, lack of education and resulting lack of confidence.

Jurisdictional and physical boundaries of Indigenous communities are permeable. An infinite number of simple matters, for example, clerical pay on reserves compared with outside pay and conditions, have potential to fuel local disputes, negative images and odious comparisons.

The religious or cultural origins of Anglophone, Francophone, Inuit, Métis or Indian nations are not and should not be a matter for dispute. The existence of these nations is a fact. The only issues for constitutional negotiation need be practical ones of governance, boundaries and dispute resolution — on top of basic fiscal and economic impacts, of course.

Indigenous customary law has received too little attention in Canada despite being paid lip service in various statements and reports. Indigenous women must be fully involved in restoring it. Indigenous governments must meet international standards of human rights like all other governments.

Canada’s legal and constitutional background is often seen abroad now as uniquely advantaging Indigenous peoples — but any such halcyon days are very recent and result from Indigenous political pressure. Indigenous–white relations have been determined by broad social and political events and eras, with legal and constitutional safeguards effective when the times have been right.

The principal Canadian political advantage for Indigenous peoples has been federal jurisdiction which has provided some protection from provincial land and resource development interests. An example of the national system working properly if not always well. In Nunavut, Inuit language and cultural difference is protected by federal and Constitutional enactments, while the region shares in revenues and opportunities of an affluent nation-state. However, the largest Indigenous people, Métis and non-status Indians, have been largely left out of federal arrangements, while being often marginalised by provincial governments too — so Powley must become a starting point for change.

Federal funding of Indigenous political associations regionally and nationally from around 1969 on a multiyear block funding basis (to avoid real or apparent political interference from governments under attack from those associations) allowed Indigenous peoples to regain the ear of government after 150 years. It also gave them practical access to legislatures and parties and began the process of recruitment of able Indigenous people to political parties.

Indigenous politics have resulted in concrete modifications of governing systems. For example, Indigenous claims and environmental research have had an impact on policy (both in form and substance) through the validation of Indigenous traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) and its embodiment in new administrative structures that share power with governments in natural and cultural resource management, development and related land use planning issues.

Indigenous rural and hinterland reactions to hydroelectric power, mining, oil and gas, the military, human settlement, non-Indigenous fishing and hunting, and other projects or activities have provided a firm base for much of the environmental awareness of Canadians in general in recent decades. Rather than simply a fashionable occupation of urban élites, as it is sometimes caricatured, environmental knowledge has been linked to daily food and livelihood needs, and to social and cultural survival. Proper environmental standards in hinterlands have been largely achieved by the determination of poor illiterate isolated hunter-gatherers rather than scientists, experts with glossy booklets or powerful government ministries. Collective political will makes all the difference.

Since 1945, Canadians in the North have faced the same initial challenges for white settlement as faced the first Europeans in the Americas — notably Indigenous relations, environmental understanding and creation of new political structures and societies. They have arrived at very different solutions from those reached in the nineteenth or early twentieth centuries, by seeking accommodation between natives and newcomers.

The White Man carries his aspirations to create a conventional political structure into Indigenous hinterlands and can appeal to national liberal traditions to overrule or ignore Indigenous customs and imperatives as, for example, in Canada’s Indigenous rebellions in 1869 and 1885, and in northern territories for many years after 1945. An active national government and strong constitutional framework are needed to protect Indigenous peoples and to broker genuine political accommodations in such hinterlands. No sub-national settler government anywhere has done this voluntarily or adequately beyond a few fleeting moments; for example, enlightened premiers in Manitoba or South Australia.

Indigenous peoples prefer even dysfunctional and isolated communities of their own to trusting unreformed white dominated territory or other sub-national governments.

The Indigenous constitutional success story unfolding across the country and especially in the northern 75 per cent of Canada is more a happy haze than a detailed picture to most Canadians. Successful recent Canadian policies have been slowly and often grudgingly achieved by trial and error, or trial and furore, more often than by design.

But successes have been achieved, to the credit of all Canada. Sometimes the lack of public interest has been helpful, and Indigenous determination — always. As the Nisga’a Treaty uproar shows, public understanding can be limited and public interest unhelpful. The need for constitutional education and explanation is great.

In Western Canada, and non-Indigenous Canada at large, some people are moving towards talkback radio and tabloid newspaper democracy, confusing equality with uniformity. Most of the Indigenous political reforms achieved over the past 35 years are under attack by the Canadian Alliance, the main federal Opposition.

Northern successes have occurred despite unhelpful national hinterland and development policies. Now that the new system is proven, more supportive policies should be put in place. Debates over diamond mines and infrastructure projects in the region of the Denendeh–Nunavut border have an air of déja vu.

The failure of British and Canadian authorities to honour treaties signed with Indigenous peoples in the spirit in which they were negotiated is the most tragic failure of Canadian history and has poisoned Indigenous–white relationships and trust to this day. The most basic element in that failure was that the solemnity of respect offered by the Indigenous side was not reciprocated later by the whites whose greed for lands and removal of tribes became the all-consuming feature of the White Man’s frontier.

Indigenous Canada is experiencing a renaissance built on nationhood and other ethno-regional notions — the best way forward, as the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP) advocates. Three quarters of Canada was ‘all equal and the same’, as an Australian populist would say, with Indigenous peoples ignored and impoverished; now a better approach sees much of the country ‘all equal and different’.

In the late 1960s northern Indigenous leaders were patronised by southern Indigenous organisations but within a few years northern Inuit, Dene, Métis and Yukon Indian personalities were highly visible national political leaders. It is tempting to speculate that Indigenous politicians with more fluid politico-legal contexts in which to innovate or negotiate, for example, in northern hinterlands, have been the most successful reformers. This bolsters the conclusions of the RCAP that negotiating northern style regional frameworks across Canada, thereby breaking free of past policy and statutory shackles, would be the most promising national policy.

In the 1973 Arctic Peoples Conference, 1975 World Council of Indigenous Peoples, 1977 Inuit Circumpolar Conference and 1982 World Assembly of First Nations, Canada’s Indigenous peoples became initiators of Indigenous internationalism. This outlook widened and validated Indigenous agendas at home and altered perceptions of Indigenous peoples and peoples’ perceptions of themselves. It also transformed the northern 75 percent of Canada from passive national hinterland to international zone of innovation and action.

Implicit and explicit comparisons between Canada and other countries in Indigenous politics and policy reinforced the validity of Indigenous aspirations and resistance in official and many other white eyes. They also reminded Canada’s Anglophone and Francophone leaders and communities that their own political cultures were specific developments arising from particular contexts — not universal truths, as many politicians and officials believed.

Indigenous peoples everywhere have similar aspirations, although styles or rhetoric differ. They have only each other from whom to learn and improve the political science and public administration of their renewal and self-determination. They should co-operate internationally in political studies, exchanges and mutual support much more than they do at present.

An overall Indigenous political culture in Canada exists and is evolving steadily today (and may be seen by outsiders as a sum of parts such as those enumerated here), in addition to many re-emerging and even new local and regional Indigenous political cultures. At the same time, Canada’s overall culture, including its political culture, is modified and expanded by interaction with the Indigenous renaissance. The big picture and the big policy settings are now very encouraging. However, small issues of equality confused with uniformity, and the inevitable messes and mistakes which will occur as new Indigenous structures take on old and new roles, will create much noise which the fainthearted and unsympathetic will represent as chaos, danger and division. Canada’s governments and social, economic and cultural establishment must explain the constitutional, legal, moral and commonsense imperatives behind Indigenous self-determination to all Canadians. The past failure to do so in respect of Quebec should be a stark warning of the dangers of not doing so.

At present many Indigenous and non-Indigenous reformers fear that progress has stalled in Canada. Local issues of equality confused with uniformity, and the inevitable messes and mistakes which will occur as new Indigenous structures take on old and new roles, create noise which the fainthearted and unsympathetic represent as chaos, danger and division. The strongest political policy opposition has been coming from the Right and public authorities have grown cautious. However, within the Indigenous movement, especially the women’s and accountability groups, there has been an urgent call for reform within the workings of self-government and self-management. And, while Indigenous leaders rightly seek and demand immediate action on the more expansive promise of 40 years of Indigenous reform, the White Man’s authorities often find it more comfortable, more manageable and more successful to work with smaller increments. My own view is that the present is at worst a pause, not a halt. Momentum will be regained with new energy and ideas. l

[1]King George III on the need to respect ‘the several Nations or Tribes of Indians with whom We are connected’, Royal Proclamation of 1763.

[2]An earlier draft of this paper with the same title appears abridged in Wessendorf K (ed) Challenging Politics: Indigenous Peoples’ Experiences with Political Parties and Elections IWGIA Copenhagen 2001 p 192. That book’s contents were commissioned as an international research project of the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA), Copenhagen, funded by the European Union (EU). The entire draft of the paper is available from AILR.

[3]This article is published in two parts: the first part appeared in (2001) 6(2) AILR 1.

[4]Peter Jull is Adjunct Associate Professor at the School of Political Science and International Studies, University of Queensland.

[5]Jull P ‘Dividing the north’ (1985) 6(4) Policy Options 10.

[6]NDP, the New Democratic Party, is Canada’s ‘labour’ party, originally a Western Canada popular movement in which Christian clergy played key roles. It has never held office at national level but has formed governments in recent decades in Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and British Columbia.

[7]The author distinguishes between elected politicians and hired public service officials in the usual Canadian way.

[8]Greenland MP Moses Olsen also played a pivotal role in Danish government acceptance of Greenland home rule in the early 1970s, as did Lars Emil Johansen at a later stage. Alaskan Inuit are adept at the art of Congressional influence.

[9]That is, White Anglo-Saxon Protestants.

[10]Nunavut Constitutional Forum Building Nunavut: a working document with a proposal for an Arctic Constitution Nunavut Constitutional Forum Ottawa 1983, English text 45 pages in quatri-lingual format.

[11]A forthcoming book on Indigenous sea management in Tropical Torres Strait and Northern Australia in comparative context by Dr Nonie Sharp, Anthropology, LaTrobe University, Melbourne, includes Nunavut.

[12]Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council Draft Nuu-chah-nulth Agreement-in-Principle Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council, Government of British Columbia and Government of Canada Port Alberni BC 2001.

[13]R v Sparrow [1990] 1 SCR 1075.

[14]R v Marshall [1999] 3 SCR 456.

[15]R v Powley (2001) 53 OR (3d) 53. Extracted and headnoted in (2001) 6(1) AILR 85.

[16]The Constitution Act 1982 is Sch B of the Canada Act 1982(UK).

[17]Calder v A-G (BC) [1973] SCR 313.

[18]For the Nunavut story see Dahl J, Hicks J and Jull P (eds) Nunavut — Inuit Regain Control of Their Lands and Their Lives International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs Copenhagen 2000, especially Hicks J and White G ‘Nunavut: Inuit self-determination through a land claim and public government?’ and Jull P ‘Inuit and Nunavut: renewing the new world’.

[19]Wiltshire K ‘Native peoples and human rights’ in Alexander M and Galligan B (eds) Comparative Political Studies: Australia and Canada Pitman Longman Cheshire Melbourne 1992 p 146.

[20]Before, during and after the 27 November 2000 federal election in Canada, the desperate plight of Labrador’s Innu children and their no less bewildered parents became a national drama with community leaders going to the Prime Minister’s door, with promises and confusion abounding. The whole country was discussing these complex social and cultural problems, and in a mostly intelligent and caring way. Canada has come a long way.

[21]See Kleivan I ‘The Arctic peoples’ conference in Copenhagen, November 22-25, 1973’ (1992) 16(1-2) Études Inuit Studies 227; and Jull P ‘“First world” Indigenous internationalism after twenty-five years’ (1998) 4(9) Indigenous Law Bulletin 13.

[22]Convention concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries, adopted 27 June 1989, 72 ILO Official Bull 59 (entered into force 5 September 1991) (‘ILO 169’).

[23]Untied Nations Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples E/CN4/Sub2/1993/29.

[24]Jull above note 20; Jull P ‘Indigenous internationalism: what should we do next?’ Indigenous Affairs International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs Copenhagen January–March 1999 p 12.

[25]Manuel G & Posluns M The Fourth World: An Indian Reality Free Press New York 1974; Sanders DE The Formation of the World Council of Indigenous Peoples International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs Copenhagen 1977.

[26]Lauritzen P Oil and Amulets: Inuit: A People United at the Top of the World Breakwater St John’s Newfoundland 1977.

[27]Inuit Circumpolar Conference Principles and Elements for a Comprehensive Arctic Policy Published for the Inuit Circumpolar Conference by the Centre for Northern Studies and Research McGill University Montreal 1992.

[28]Berger served as the Commissioner of the MacKenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry from 1974 to 1977. His report, Northern Frontier, Northern Homeland, led to the suspension of the multimillion dollar pipeline development pending the resolution of native land claims and environmental concerns. The pipeline remains unbuilt.

[29]Berger T Village Journey: The Report of the Alaska Native Review Commission Hill and Wang New York 1985.

[30]Jull P The Politics of Northern Frontiers — in Australia, Canada and Other ‘First World’ Countries North Australia Research Unit, Australian National University Darwin 1991.

[31]Meanwhile, one very literate Inuk, Mary Simon, has become Canada’s Ambassador to the Arctic and to Denmark.

[32]Jull above note 21.

[33]ATSIC combines a federal administrative agency with a national and regional set of elected Indigenous councils to advise it. Its successive heads — Lowitja O’Donoghue, Gatjil Djerrkura and Geoff Clark — have proven to be effective spokespersons on the national scene and a thorn in the side of the Federal Government.

[34]As Russell and Jones report to RCAP: ‘Among Aboriginal representatives, we found no support at all for a pan-Canadian, pan-Aboriginal “treaty” such as that envisioned by Premier Ghiz a few years ago. Such a treaty is incompatible with the “nation-to-nation” relationship which First Nations wish to maintain with Canada. They simply do not see themselves as part of a Canadian Aboriginal or Indian nation. Designating a Canada-wide agreement as a “treaty” threatens their own sense of national identity.’ Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples For Seven Generations: The Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples Public Works and Government Services (Publishing) Ottawa 1997 p 32.

[35]Canada’s comprehensive claims settlements are called ‘regional agreements’ by Australians. Australia’s agreements to date involve much less than the Canadian ones.

[36]While Australian parties and governments make merry with prejudice and faulty history, Aboriginal leaders have maintained dignity and attempted to develop a consensus and framework for progress: Jull P ‘Populist politics vs Aboriginal realities in Australia ... and Canada?’ (2000) 21(10) Policy Options p 52; Jull P and Kajlich H ‘First Peoples, late admissions: recognising Indigenous rights’ in Sampford C & Round T (eds) Beyond the Republic: Meeting the Global Challenges to Constitutionalism The Federation Press Sydney 2001 p 257 (and Appendix 2 p 303).

[37]Guerin v R [1984] 2 SCR 335.

[38]R v Sioui [1990] 1 SCR 456.

[39]Delgamuukw v British Colombia [1997] 3 SCR 1010.