First Nations face similar challenges as the far northern Arctic region described by ITK president
Like the communities in Arctic described in the following article, remote and rural First Nations across Canada face exactly the same paternalistic and colonial attitudes ...
In the Arctic, you can't go back to the future
MARY SIMON - March 26, 2008
Stephen Harper visited Yellowknife this month for the Arctic Winter Games, his fifth trip to the North since becoming Prime Minister in 2006.
Mr. Harper's interest in the North is no doubt genuine, and he is to be congratulated on spending time there. Media around the world are awash in unprecedented coverage about the circumpolar world. News stories range from the rapid shrinkage of multiyear sea ice to speculation about new routes from East Asia to Europe, to a just-out European Union report suggesting global warming in the Arctic may precipitate security issues for Europe involving energy wars, mass migration, failed states and political radicalization.
But while the federal government's attentions to the Arctic may be genuine, there is an eerie throwback quality to its focus. Speeches and interviews by cabinet ministers have a Diefenbaker-era "roads to resources" tone to them. There appears to be a central assumption that a massive expansion in large-scale mineral and oil and gas extraction projects should drive everything else; that helping make Canada a mineral and energy "superpower" should be the North's new vocation; that the state should get out of the way by reducing regulatory controls; that the trickledown effects of new wealth-creation can be relied upon to limit the alienation of those who live at the economic and social margins.
The reality is that the Arctic has the country's worst housing, health and education indicators. This cannot be allowed to continue. Notwithstanding last October's Throne Speech promise of "an integrated northern strategy," a quick review of the recent federal budget shows where the federal government's priorities rest at the moment: sizable new funding for mineral development, alongside earlier big-ticket commitments to military facilities and hardware, with a "hold the line" approach to endemic social-policy problems.
In this retro-picture, the aboriginal realities of the Arctic — our demographic majority, our aboriginal and treaty rights, our distinct languages and cultures — are effectively airbrushed out. Public pronouncements on northern policy priorities rarely mention Inuit and other aboriginal peoples and, when they do, the references are footnotes and afterthoughts. The views and suggestions of representative aboriginal organizations are sidelined. The Auditor-General's repeated criticisms that northern land-claims agreements are not being implemented properly by the Crown are left unanswered. Former B.C. Supreme Court justice Thomas Berger's comprehensive 2006 report, titled "The Nunavut Project," is put on a shelf.
There is a core fallacy that threatens to take hold at the heart of the federal government's emerging northern and Arctic policies: that the top third of Canada can be managed and developed as if its aboriginal history and demography, and its aboriginal values and character, are peripheral and transitional. Policies built around such a misleading notion will be unsound in concept and unsustainable in practice.
The "integrated northern strategy" promised in last year's Throne Speech is, at least notionally, still under construction. There is now an opportunity to get things right. Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami has taken the initiative in developing a proposal for an Arctic strategy, and sent it to the Prime Minister two months ago. It is built around a careful selection of key themes.
Creating economic and environmental win-wins
Treating economic and environmental policy choices as mutually exclusive is debunked by experience everywhere on the planet. Leaving large parts of the population mired in intractable social problems is as poor a long-term economic decision as it is an affront to collective conscience and citizenship. Further, too much policy-making regarding the Arctic has been a function of short-term thinking and strategies that change with the changes in government.
Respecting cultural distinctiveness
The Arctic is at least as distinctive a region as any other part of Canada. There are no factors that can be recited in support of Quebec as a nation that cannot be recited for Inuit Nunaat, the four regions that make up our Inuit homeland. Federal policies should work with Inuit cultural reality, not deny it. It is not acceptable, for example, to create and fund school systems that give full respect to English- and French-language minorities while treating the Inuit language of the majority as doomed to oblivion.
Relying on the home team on home turf
Federalism belongs to all of us: The front-line role of managing the Canadian Arctic should be entrusted to the peoples of the Canadian Arctic.
Arctic foreign and domestic policy
Both foreign and domestic policy apply to the Arctic, which will always be a high-cost area. Public investments need to be chosen carefully, so as to enhance the state of civil society in the Arctic, as well as international objectives in relation to sovereignty and security. Our starting goal should be the defusing of international tensions, the creation of institutions and processes that enhance co-operation on things such as environmental protection and navigation, and the search for collective wins.
Getting the geography right
Past federal government definitions have been, quite literally, all over the map. Confusion abounds. We need a clear and complete geographic definition that unites all the Arctic regions, including Arctic Quebec, Arctic Labrador and the huge marine areas around the Arctic Archipelago.
As always, the Inuit of Canada invite the Government of Canada and fellow Canadians to work with us. In reaching out to Canadians, I have seen ready support for Inuit priorities in the faces and comments of the people I have been meeting. It is a positive development that the Arctic is finally occupying the place it deserves in the attentions and imaginations of political leaders. The cliché of the "the Great White North" must give way to an Arctic strategy that builds from the ground up.
The Inuit and other northern aboriginal peoples will prove willing and constructive partners in governance of Canada's part of the circumpolar world. And they will prove equally committed opponents of anything that falls short of genuine partnership.
Mary Simon is president of the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami.