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Five:
Up North
The
Canadian North is the largest
undeveloped region left
on a shrunken planet, but
mind-boggling though it
may be to many futurists,
it only sporadically holds
southern attention. We take
it for granted as part of
our national heritage as
a northern people and land.
The vast majority of us
being urban dwellers living
within 350 kilometres of
the Canada-U.S. border,
we often consider our North
to be as remote as a small
nation in the developing
world and about as important.
"The
views of the majority of
Canadians about the North
are unsurveyed, and perhaps
unformulated," concluded
H.B. Hawthorn in Science
and the North almost
twenty years ago. This view
doubtless remains equally
true in the last decade
of the twentieth century.
As we struggle to stay a
nation, we can make the
last decade of the twentieth
century the one of the North.
It has stamped our national
consciousness deeply and
defines our identity throughout
the world.
For
many, the North is a state
of mind; for others, it
is more than an area --
it is a passion. For still
others, the North is, "…like
an irresistible itch, which
implacably drives man to
mobility" in the splendid
phrase of Professor Louis-Edmond
Hamelin of Laval University,
an authority on our nordicity.
Nineteenth century adventurers,
explorers and coureurs
de bois could not resist
the call of the North. There,
they had to experience --
in fear, in tragedy and
in bravery -- its awesome
and silent power. They had
to find escape from monotony
and renaissance from subdued
spirits.
Among
non-native Canadians, we
often see the North in a
host of localized northern
situations: the Northwest
Passage, polar expeditions,
the Inuit, unimaginable
cold, the Klondike, and
recently, oil. Two extreme
notions about the North
clash: the over-idealized
and the excessively pessimistic.
Pleasant illusions are often
ignited by the pioneer spirit;
pessimistic ones come afterwards
from those disappointed
in seeking quick profits.
One view claims the North
is a hinterland to be exploited
for the benefit of southern
Canada; another argues the
wilderness must be preserved
in a pristine condition.
Much northern history revolves
around this confrontation.
Related notions adopted
by governments, agencies,
industry, interest groups,
and so on, continue to shape
the affairs of the region,
depending on which group
is more vocal or dominant.
Southerners
tend to ignore a region
that holds a fraction of
one per cent of our population
and has no political and
economic clout to speak
of. Our view of Canada sometimes
leaves off Canada’s Far
North entirely. At Dorval
Airport in Montréal, a large
mural depicting Canada represents
only southern Canada. To
mark the occasion of the
Olympic Games in Montréal
in 1976, Canada issued a
$5 coin displaying a map
of the country. Part of
the High Arctic was missing.
Even
what constitutes the Canadian
"North" has undergone considerable
evolution since 1870. In
the immediate post-Confederation
period, anything beyond
Lake Nipissing was "North."
When we obtained new territories
from Britain in 1870, we
conferred the name "North-West
Territories" on them, but
included in this description
was land as far south as
the 49th parallel. Only
after 1912 was the name
confined to the parts of
Canada lying beyond 60°.
Politically, Canada has
a federal North, two territorial
Norths, and seven provincial
Norths.
In
assuming control of the
new territories in 1870-71,
the largest transfer of
land in recorded history,
the government of Canada
developed its new frontiers
with little real effort
to study or understand the
existing situation there,
or to adapt its policies
to the circumstances of
the region. The Red River
uprising was one result
of this lack of insight,
yet, in the historian Morris
Zaslow’s words, "Canada
seemingly learned nothing
from the experience of Red
River. The bland assumption
that the territory, having
been paid for (and conquered
by) the Dominion, ought
to be used for the primary
benefit of eastern Canada,
continued to characterize
her governance of the Northwest."
Our
national governments also
used authoritarian methods
in line with prevailing
notions of the Crown as
the ultimate source of authority.
Decisions were made in accord
with national rather than
local priorities; boundaries
and powers of the resulting
new government and territories
were set by federal officials,
and according to their wishes.
Notions of self-reliance
typical of the frontier
experience in the United
States succumbed to general
acceptance by residents
of authority from outside.
Frederick Jackson Turner’s
frontier thesis found little
reflection in Canada’s northern
frontier movement, partly
because Canada’s political
centre never moved from
Inner Canada, and partly
because the drive to open
the frontier came from groups
and forces outside the region,
more than from pioneering
settlers.
Canadian
institutions were clamped
onto the Northwest in a
rigid and unimaginative
way by successive governments
in Ottawa. The area continued
to be controlled from afar,
with its resources exploited
in order to ease the burden
of the southern taxpayer.
Local residents were allowed
little initiative. Decisions
affecting their lives were
to be made in Ottawa by
officials entirely out of
touch with the situation.
The underlying goal of the
governments of the day was
to settle the region as
quickly as possible and
replace the institutions
of Indian and Métis with
social, cultural and political
practices from southern
Canada. In colonizing the
Northwest, Ottawa failed
to recognize the urgent
problems of aboriginal peoples
caught in the vortex of
an advancing civilization.
In its eagerness to promote
development, Ottawa allowed
resources to be exploited
blindly and for any foreign
interest.
Those
who live north of sixty
degrees are the most isolated
of all Outer Canadians.
They bitterly resent their
ongoing status as political,
economic and cultural colonials.
Northern Indians and Inuit,
of course, see the North
neither as hinterland nor
as a frontier, but as their
homeland, a native land
that is held under economic
and cultural siege by colonists.
A
Regional Colossus
Canada
is above all a northern
country. One needs only
to travel abroad to see
how firmly this concept
of our nation is endorsed
in minds the world over.
Hamelin estimates that Canada’s
North constitutes seventy
per cent of our territory,
arguing the official thirty-nine
per cent merely corresponds
to the area of land and
fresh water of the Northwest
Territories and Yukon: "The
Canadian North expresses
the concept of vastness
almost to excess. By area,
the North is the principal
component of the country,
and in this sense, the North
characterizes Canada."
The
magnitude of the area is
colossal, its coastline
longer than our southern
two coastlines combined.
The Northwest Territories,
with 3.3 million square
kilometres, and the Yukon
Territory, with 0.5 million,
contain four-tenths of our
national land surface.
The
national census figures
of 1986 show that the two
territories contain less
than one-third of one per
cent of Canada’s population.
Of the 52,020 residents
of the NWT, fifty-eight
per cent report aboriginal
origins (Inuit -- 18,350,
Métis -- 3,810, Indian or
Dene --9,370); of the residents
of Yukon only 21.4 per cent
report aboriginal origins
(Indian or Dene --4,770,
Métis -- 225, Inuit -- 65).
Northern
Indians usually refer to
themselves as "Dene" except
a small group in southwestern
Yukon, the Tlingit. Dene
leaders insist they can
understand the different
languages that have a common
Athapaskan root and are
economically and culturally
united enough to become
a nation. Although Ottawa
forced them to negotiate
land claims as a single
party with the Dene, the
NWT Métis are a distinct
cultural group. For historical
reasons they tend to share
a common view as to the
most desirable relationship
between the native and non-native
communities. The same group
in the Yukon does not generally
identify itself as Métis
and has since the beginning
joined voluntarily with
Yukon Indians to negotiate
land claims.
Canada’s
Inuit live mostly in the
NW1’ from above the tree
line to as far north as
Ellesmere Island. For centuries,
they were nomadic hunters
and gatherers, but today
live in settlements close
to the sea. A study by Michael
Whittington for the 1985
MacDonald Commission concluded
that Inuit remoteness from
southern Canada has helped
them to maintain a tighter
consensus on various issues
than either the Dene and
Métis of the NWT or the
Yukon Indian people.
Surprisingly
to many southerners, the
white population of the
North is diverse. The major
variable is permanent versus
short-term residence. At
one extreme are transients
who fly in for two-or-three
week shifts and have little
or no contact with other
northern residents. A second
group, in Whittington’s
groupings, are mostly young
males, who migrate north
by highway to look for work
in resource development,
mines, and the like. Most
return south after a few
years. Another group, frequently
termed "bush hippies" by
permanent white Yukoners,
often have university degrees
and attempt to experience
the North for a few years
before drifting back to
the South. The "indefinites"
include federal public officials,
RCMP officers, and bank
and chain store employees
who usually live in the
major urban centres in both
territories. Farthest away
from transients are those
permanently located in the
NWT or Yukon. This group,
in Whittington’s apt language,
are for the most part, "whites
who have been ‘captured
by’ or have ‘fallen in love’
with the North. . . those
for whom Yukon or the NWT
is home."
A
central goal of most northerners,
whether Inuit, Indian or
white, is that their own
futures should not be subordinated
to the conflicting views
of southern Canadians. They
are anxious to get rid of
overgeneralizations. In
fact, differences abound
among northerners of the
three backgrounds: Territorians
not only differ in their
origins but also in their
political, social and economic
aspirations.
Ice
Trails to Serfdom
"The
North can be studied as
a society -- actually a
set of several societies
-- but it can only be understood
as a colony," concluded
Gurston Dacks accurately
a decade ago. It continues
to be an internal colony
of Canada, a domestic frontier
of exploitation and settlement
with a mythical promise
of national and personal
renewal, where both previous
development and current
occurrences carry the possibility
of growing racial discord,
social disorder, and widening
economic disparity. Most
of the critical decisions
affecting its peoples are
made thousands of miles
south.
Similar
patterns of development,
repeated throughout the
North, illustrate a constant
in successive national government
thinking about the region:
it is Canada’s colony to
hold, exploit, and develop
or not, exclusively as and
how Ottawa deems fit. On
the other hand, practice
frequently conflicts with
Ottawa’s rhetoric. As the
historian Jack Granatstein
notes, after one flourish
about "what we have, we
hold," Ottawa quietly abandoned
Wrangel Island, located
north of Siberia, to the
Soviet Union in the early
1920s. It wasn’t until much
later that Ottawa began
to effectively administer
many remote parts of the
NWT. Essentially the North
remained ours only because
no powerful nation thought
it worth pursuing.
The
Canadian claim to the region
is based on the unsuccessful
attempts during four hundred
years of British explorers,
including Hudson and Franklin,
to find the Northwest Passage
to the Orient. When Britain
in 1870 transferred to Canada
all lands of the Hudson’s
Bay Company -- essentially
everything between Hudson
Bay and Vancouver Island
-- we obtained the North.
A decade later, Britain
ceded to Canada sovereignty
of the rest of the Arctic
lands, the archipelago and
Baffin Island. It did so
largely, it appears, to
pass to Ottawa the problem
of impending American penetration:
Canada was thought better
able than Britain to resist
Washington’s ascendant Monroe
Doctrine. The British offer
was accepted by a resolution
in the Canadian Parliament
in 1878. Approval was given
on the premise that the
region would cost nothing
to administer and that the
only alternative was control
by the United States. It
wasn’t until 1897, when
stories of violence and
destruction of Inuit villages
reached the south, that
the Laurier government bothered
to draw boundaries dividing
the North into more manageable
districts.
The
Laurier government’s initial
efforts to exert sovereignty
in the North consisted of
six expeditions between
1897 and 1911, to collect
custom duties and fees from
whalers and to tell residents
they lived under Canadian
law. By 1907, Senator Pascal
Poirier could advance his
sector theory which claimed
for Canada all land south
of the North Pole lying
between longitudinal lines
drawn from the western and
eastern extremities of our
two coastlines. This theory
eventually won international
acceptance after our successful
dispute with the Danes over
Ellesmere Island. A Norwegian
claim to Sverdrup Island
was in effect bought out
in 1930 by Ottawa for $67,000.
A more lively dispute with
the Americans began in 1925,
when an American scientific
expedition to the Arctic
commanded by Robert Byrd
falsely claimed to have
Canadian government permission
to enter the region. Subsequent
American expeditions respected
Canadian law; by 1933, our
sovereignty in the North
was for the most part established
from the standpoint of international
law. In practice, however,
when World War II began,
Ottawa had still to demonstrate
a need for the Arctic. When,
in 1938, President Franklin
Roosevelt pledged to defend
all of Canada, he was, as
Granatstein notes, in effect
"placing Canada under the
Monroe Doctrine."
The
1970s saw the first erosion
of colonialism in the North.
Still, southern factors
prevail and dominate northern
policies. Northerners remain
dependent constitutionally
on Ottawa. They elect only
three out of 295 members
of Parliament and have been
represented in only two
national cabinets since
1945. Ottawa holds the levers
on native claims, political
development and economic
policy, thus reinforcing
the subordinate status of
the two territorial governments.
Initiatives and serious
proposals in these vital
areas usually originate
in Ottawa rather than in
territorial governments,
which are forced in turn
to react most of the time,
thereby diverting available
resources from initiating
their own long term planning.
The
subordinate status of the
North is most visible in
economic development because
southern interests normally
determine economic activity.
When large-scale economic
development takes place
in the North, it usually
reflects the colonial tendency
of providing little benefit
to the area affected. Even
the local spin-off is not
very effective because megaprojects
are normally fully supplied
from the South. The profits
of most projects flow south
rather than remaining in
the North to finance further
economic growth. The relationship
between the two dominant
northern economic sectors
reinforce the colonial character:
a large-scale, capital intensive
resource sector undermines
a small-scale, labour-intensive
hunting, fishing and trapping
sector. This causes much
social and economic dislocation
and increases native population
dependence on the resource
sector.
Traditional
Ways of Life
If
demographics indicate the
importance of not overgeneralizing
about northerners, the region’s
history reinforces the same
point. Long before Europeans
reached our North, various
aboriginal peoples fed,
clothed, and housed themselves
using wildlife, plants and
fish. This way of life was
later altered at different
times by explorers, fur
traders, whalers, and missionaries.
The Klondike Gold Rush of
1898, for example, brought
thousands of whites into
the Yukon for the first
time; while most soon gave
up and left, a significant
number remained. In the
eastern Arctic and Mackenzie
Valley, however, the earliest
white intruders were missionaries,
the RCMP, and the Hudson’s
Bay Company agents, all
of whom came "to do something"
for indigenous residents.
The Inuit in the eastern
Arctic were left largely
alone by whites, except
for the occasional nurse,
until as late as the 1 960s
when most abandoned their
nomadic lifestyle and began
to settle in larger communities.
The
building of the Alaska Highway
during World War II caused
major changes for natives
and whites alike in the
Yukon. As hunting and fishing
stocks deteriorated along
the route, Indians, who
were fast becoming a minority,
experienced severe social
problems, including alcoholism,
family breakup and crime.
Many of their settlements
were relocated to sites
along the Alaska highway
to facilitate the creation
of an essentially welfare
economy for them. Their
minority status reduced
their policy influence on
the white Yukon majority.
During
the 1960s, economic development
in the NWT began with prime
minister John Diefenbaker’s
"roads to resources" program.
The building by Ottawa of
all-weather roads to a host
of remote communities, including
Inuvik and Fort MacPherson,
produced an effect on the
Dene similar to, if less
severe than, that of the
Alaska Highway earlier on
Yukon Indians. Two factors
moderated the pattern: greater
political sophistication
by the Dene and increased
sensitivity by southern
Canadians to the plight
of native people.
In
the far North, the building
of a network of radar bases
and the Distant Early Warning
(DEW) Line, along with the
coming of frequent airline
flights to and from most
of these installations,
and regular air service
to the eastern Arctic, tended
to duplicate the Alaska
Highway effect. Most Inuit
maintained their older way
of life for a while, even
if families began to live
in prefabricated homes with
oil heaters. In the case
of the inland Inuit of Keewatin,
a series of natural disasters
among the caribou during
the late 1950s resulted
in a major famine. Ottawa
officials relocated many
of them to unfamiliar settlements,
including Rankin Inlet,
and they became reliant
upon social assistance.
During
late 1988, any lingering
complacency about long term
trends for the Canadian
Inuit was exploded by the
publication of Cohn Irwin’s
report, Lords of the
Arctic: Wards of the State,
which painted a very
bleak picture of Inuit society
forty years hence. "Most
of the Inuit in the Arctic
in the year 2025," Irwin
predicted, "will probably
be second-generation wards
of the state, living out
their lives in ‘arctic ghettos’
plagued by increasing rates
of crime." Residents with
professional or university
education will tend to be
white and they will continue
to dominate the higher levels
of management in both the
private and public sectors.
Old
ways of life were largely
lost when the Inuit were
moved by Ottawa officialdom
into permanent settlements
during the late 1950s. A
new generation grew up in
a cultural environment transplanted
from the south and reinforced
by a school system that
did nothing to enhance pride
in native heritage or to
teach old values. As traditional
skills and language continue
to disappear, a new generation
of Inuit are neither able
to live "out on the land,"
nor are they well-equipped
with employable skills.
By allowing destructive
and assimilative processes
to continue unabated, Canadians
as a whole will lose once
again an opportunity to
preserve a unique and ancient
culture as a permanent and
enriching component of our
cultural mosaic.
The
reality of the life north
of 60° reflects the dependence
on wildlife of peoples who
for centuries lived off
the land and harvested its
wildlife. In their religious
beliefs, "wildlife is there
for a purpose: for man to
make a living off. Wildlife
is a gift of the Great Creator.
These are the gifts of nature.
Wildlife is the fruit of
the land." Traditions were
established in the past
of an Animal Mother who
insisted that the carcasses
of dead animals be utilized
in full; otherwise all would
suffer. Today, this essential
relationship between aboriginal
people and the animals they
trap remains an important
part of their culture.
The
fur trade played a major
role in the creation of
Canada. It provided the
incentive for the exploration
of much of the country and
remained the economic foundation
for Western Canada until
about 1870. Today, fur trapping--the
oldest land-based industry
in Canada-- pumps $1 billion
into our economy yearly
and some fifty thousand
aboriginal Canadians rely
on it. Wildlife as a renewable
resource remains a major
component of the northern
economy. Hunting and trapping
continue to be important
for nutritional, economic,
social and cultural reasons
even though many native
northerners are attracted
by wage employment available
through nonrenewable resources.
This
is illustrated in a recent
survey in which eighty-eight
per cent of all Inuit in
Chesterfield Inlet were
found to have eaten Inuit
food the previous day. Store-bought
food costs approximately
twice as much in the North
as in southern Canada so
the value of native food
is considerable. The product
of the hunt represents more
than a family’s next meal.
There are other uses for
animals: tools, medicine,
jewellery and income. Clothing
made from caribou and seal
is far superior to southern
products in its insulating
properties. The meat is
shared through the network
established by the extended
family: older community
members, family and friends
all receive part of it.
Polar bear skins are used
to make mitts, soles of
boots and pants. Skins can
be used in mattresses for
sleeping in tents and igloos,
and in protective matting
for transportation on sleds.
Ironically, only those native
hunters who have a job can
afford to go hunting in
the short time spans available.
The unemployed cannot afford
to go hunting even though
they have time to do so
-- the high capital and
operating costs of mechanized
hunting (about $10,000 per
year for the fully outfitted
hunter) restrict hunting
to those with cash incomes.
In
recent years, the trapping
of wild, fur-bearing animals
has come under a new and
frontal attack by the animal
welfare movement based in
urban centres. Many Canadians
and Americans rallying against
furs are only vaguely aware,
if at all, of the concept
of harvesting rights, or
of Inuit nutritional and
cultural dependence upon
the hunt, and of the scarcity
of other economic opportunities
in Northern Canada. By forcing
natives from the land, these
groups would make it possible
for major industries to
move in, thus causing destruction
of wildlife itself-- the
very thing that these concerned
individuals attempt to prevent.
Rosemary
Kuptana, vice-president
of the Inuit Circumpolar
Conference, told Arctic
natives that animal rights
campaigners are seeking
nothing less than cultural
genocide against Inuit.
Stephen Kakfwi, the Dene
Nation president and now
a cabinet minister in the
government of the NWT, warned
his compatriots about the
threat and the power of
the anti-harvest campaign:
"this force is potentially
far more dangerous than
the threat to our lands
posed by resource developers
and far more oppressing
than colonial governments."
Natives, fighting back through
the Aboriginal Trappers
Association and other organizations,
are creating public awareness.
There are indications that
the general public across
Canada now supports the
continued harvesting of
wildlife by natives.
Finn
Lynge of the Inuit Circumpolar
Conference Environmental
Commission, Greenland, stresses
that animal protection movements
have a legitimate job to
do in sensitizing man to
unnecessary suffering, a
goal with which the Inuit
identify strongly. He adds,
however, " . . . my main
message from all of us,
the Indians, and the Inuit
of North America and Greenland,
is clear: as far as our
right to eat meat, to use
skin garments, and to create
a modest economy on the
surplus of these products
we need no colonialistic
suppression of our way.
...It is a human right to
go and get the food where
it is, in a responsible
manner, without ruining
and depleting the resources
around you." I strongly
agree.
Aggressive
media-oriented campaigns
by animal rights groups
almost brought the fur industry
to an end. The human consequences
of the anti-seal hunting
campaign to native communities
in Greenland and the eastern
NWT are well known. In the
NWT and Northern Québec,
the number of seal pelts
sold declined from about
44,000 in 1980-81 to 8,000
in 1983-84 and the value
of seal pelts declined from
$952,590 to $76,681 in the
same period. The government
of the NWT estimated that
eighteen of twenty Inuit
villages lost sixty percent
of total annual community
income--a loss that affected
1,500 Inuit hunters and
their families. In Resolute,
NWT, total income from sealing
dropped from $54,000 in
1982 to $1,000 in 1983.
A few years ago, Finn Lynge
mentioned during a conference
on the use of northern wildlife
that, on the invitation
of the Greenland home-rule
government, Greenpeace International
had sent two representatives
to Greenland to see the
conditions in some of the
seal-hunting communities
in Arctic west Greenland.
These representatives extended
a public apology to the
Inuit people for the damage
that Greenpeace has done
to them. In general, native
trappers find themselves
incapable of conducting
the high-profile campaigns
necessary to counter the
crusades launched by well-financed
and professionally-organized
animal rights movements.
Wolfgang
Schroeder, an environmental
scientist from the University
of Munich, says Europeans
need to be shown how important
trapping is to the aboriginal
way of life. He stresses
the need for a broad and
thorough campaign about
how natives in the Northwest
Territories use wildlife
and how they will be affected
if this centuries-old way
of earning a living is seriously
threatened. Canadians should
have a leading role in increasing
this awareness. Our native
peoples and their centuries-old
heritage, the very thing
that makes us different
from other nations, is threatened
and the cultural fabric
of many communities already
weakened. If the harvest
of wildlife is lost, the
fabric may disintegrate.
It
is not only the Inuit whose
existence, sovereignty,
and self-reliance are threatened.
The Innu of Northern Québec
and Labrador found themselves
at the centre of the storm
over the low-level flights
from the Canadian Forces
Base in Goose Bay thundering
over the territory they
call Nitassinan, or "Our
Land." The present 7,000
ear-splitting flights a
year would have increased
to 33,000 flights a year
if NATO had decided to establish
a tactical weapons and fighter
training centre in Goose
Bay. When, earlier this
year, NATO sensibly decided
not to build a base in Labrador
as part of the East-West
Peace dividend, Canadians
in all parts of the country
were vexed when the Mulroney
government announced it
intends to expand low-level
flight tests around Goose
Bay. As the spokesman for
the 1 ,200-member Naskapi-Montagnais
Innu Association noted,
the number of low-level
flights could increase from
the current 7,000 to 18,000
a year by 1996 under existing
agreements.
Thus,
until the NATO decision,
one of the last hunting-gathering
cultures of nomadic people,
with a way of life 9,000
years old, was being pressured
into "new" lifestyles by
industrial development or
national interests that
did not include them. The
results could only have
been welfare dependence,
alcoholism, malnutrition,
domestic violence and suicide.
Those Innu who managed to
cling to their traditional
lifestyle were watching
with powerless frustration
as their shrinking hunting
and fishing grounds were
threatened by jet engine
noises and a large intrusion
of transitory southerners.
Northern
Land Use
Land-use
is the most emotional issue
facing northerners. Land
is the basis of life, the
source of sustenance, and
the origin of material wealth.
Northern natives see land
very differently from non-natives.
Native people call the land
their land, for that is
the meaning in Nitassinan,
of Nunavut: "Our
land." The Crees call their
area Eeyou Astchee: "The
people’s homeland."
The
pace of industrial development
in the Yukon and Northwest
Territories accelerated
in the 1970s, bringing with
it the need for land-use
planning to direct development
and conservation of the
region’s natural resources.
A compromise must be reached
if land is to be used with
care, and resources developed
to provide the maximum benefit
to the North while satisfying
the voracious appetite of
the South; this implies
northern land use carried
out in the North essentially
by northern peoples.
The
orderly political development
of the North depends on
significant changes in both
the nature and process of
land-use decisions. A recent
book published by the Canadian
Arctic Resources Committee,
Hinterland or Homeland:
Land -use planning in Northern
Canada, argues that
appropriate forms of planning
can make a key contribution
to human and economic development
in the North and is central
to both stable development
and to the very security
of Canada north of 60°.
"The particular mechanisms
by which we manage our northern
lands will affect everything,"
says William E. Rees, an
editor of the book, "from
the fate of that solitary
trapper now picking his
way along a stony Yukon
creek bed to whether Canada
has a significant future
as a polar nation." A consensus
appears among interested
parties that land-use planning
in the North is essential
and that it can be done
cooperatively by governments,
aboriginal peoples, communities
and industry.
Central
to it is the need to ensure
that the authority to make
resource-use decisions be
devolved from Ottawa to
Yellowknife and Whitehorse.
As land claims by aboriginal
organizations are settled
and enshrined in legislation,
the resource-use decisions
in the North should reflect
the real needs of northerners
since they affect the quality
of life in the northern
third of our nation.
The
claims settlements mean
in effect opening the door
to native participation
in decision-making as they
will provide aboriginal
people with a voice in the
management and development
of the North’s resources.
The interests of native
northerners will be reflected
in wildlife management,
environment protection and
the use of water and land.
For non-native northerners,
land claim settlements can
speed up devolution by resolving
questions of aboriginal
title to Crown lands and
by creating a better climate
for business and industry
across the North.
North
of 60°’ four major groups
representing some 40,000
native northerners have
engaged in comprehensive
claims negotiations. After
nearly two decades of negotiation,
the Council for Yukon Indians,
representing 6,500 natives,
reached an agreement in
principle with Ottawa and
the Yukon government in
March, 1990. If ratified,
the agreement would give
the Indians 41,439 square
kilometres of land and $248
million in compensation.
The Dene-Métis, comprising
two major groups with 13,000
claimants in thirty communities
across the Mackenzie Valley,
agreed in principle in mid-1990
to a settlement giving them
about eighteen percent of
the land in the region or
about 121,000 square kilometres
and $500 million in compensation.
The Dene have since refused
to ratify it unless its
treaty and aboriginal title
provisions are re-negotiated.
The
4,000 Inuvialuit scattered
from the shores of the Beaufort
Sea to the northern islands
in the Western Arctic reached
an agreement in 1984 with
Ottawa: they were given
title to 91,000 square kilometres
and $152 million in cash
compensation and are allowed
to manage the settlement
funds and lands and wildlife
within the region.
In
April 1990, an agreement-in-principle
was signed with the Tungavik
Federation of Nunavut. It
is the largest comprehensive
land claim in Canada, representing
more than 17,000 Inuit and
a land area of approximately
two million square kilometres
within the NWT. If completed
over eighteen months, it
would provide the Inuit
with $580 million in financial
compensation and confirm
their title to more than
350,000 square kilometres
of land -- an area about
half the size of Saskatchewan.
Other rights and benefits
in the agreement include
resource royalties, guaranteed
wildlife harvesting rights,
participation in decision-making
structures and dealing with
management of land and the
environment.
The
necessary preconditions
to northern growth appear
to be within reach as all
these agreements become
a fact of life.
Northern
Development Re-examined
Reviewing
the history of the development
of the North, one sees three
major stages. The first
was its discovery and commercial
penetration, initially by
Europeans and later by Southern
Californians. Phase two
was the creation of administrative
imperialism in Ottawa. The
third and current period
is characterized by the
emergence of industrial
production dominated by
Inner Canadian-owned businesses
and to a degree by foreigners.
The
discovery of the Canadian
North was probably by Norsemen
during the 1200s, but it
was mostly the British who
were the first European
visitors. The dominant fur
company in the region became
the Hudson’s Bay Company,
founded in 1670. It supplied
its northern forts mostly
from London and for many
years simply waited for
Indians to bring furs to
its trading posts. When
the more aggressive North
West Company, based in Montréal,
began diverting business
during the 1770s, the Hudson’s
Bay Company agents began
going into the northern
interior to get furs. Beaver
was the most valuable product
so Bay traders largely ignored
the Arctic, where no beaver
lived, in favour of Great
Slave Lake and later the
Yukon. Only in the twentieth
century did the Inuit enter
the fur trade, relying mostly
on the Arctic fox.
When
the Hudson’s Bay Company
portion of the continent
was bought in 1870, the
major prize was clearly
the Prairies. Inner Canadians
intended to leave the North
and its residents undisturbed
until southerners determined
otherwise. The first flicker
of southern interest in
the north was the Klondike
Gold Rush of 1898. Thousands
rushed north to search for
gold. A railway was completed
with much difficulty from
Whitehorse to the port at
Skagway, Alaska, in 1900.
The first North-West Mounted
Police recruits arrived
with the miners in the Klondike,
and many detachments were
later formed across the
North. Other officials were
sent north to do surveys,
research and exploration
in order to establish sovereignty
more securely. As Peter
Usher, a major authority
on the North, notes, "Even
50 years after Confederation,
there were no publicly employed
doctors, teachers, or administrators
in the Northwest Territories."
The
Northwest Territories as
such were only established
by Ottawa in 1920; official
indifference to native residents,
whose land had in effect
been seized without compensation,
persisted long afterwards.
Two treaties were signed
with the Dene, but none
was attempted with the Inuit.
Indeed, accepting constitutional
responsibility for aboriginals
living in northern Québec
caused the national and
provincial governments to
battle each other to the
Supreme Court of Canada
in 1939, each seeking to
decline any role. Ottawa
lost and reluctantly accepted
responsibility for Inuit
education and health, although
in practice both were mostly
provided throughout the
North by Catholic and Anglican
missionaries for long afterwards.
The
second phase of Inner Canadian
incorporation of the North
coincided with a more vigorous
exertion of sovereignty
by Ottawa, and began with
the construction of the
Alaska Highway and other
northern mega-projects.
As world fur prices declined
in the mid-twentieth century,
the Hudson’s Bay Company
reduced its credit to trappers
and closed a number of posts.
Many local natives were
forced to approach military
and other installations
in search of employment,
supplies and even food.
In the face of incidents
of starvation, most notably
among the Keewatin Inuit
during the 1950s, Ottawa
intervened in a number of
ways, including the granting
of family allowances and
old age pensions for the
first time. Ballot boxes
for federal elections were
first distributed in the
Northwest Territories during
the 1950s.
Federal
schools and nursing stations
were built throughout the
North during the 1960s and
l970s. The downside, again
to quote Usher, was "a peculiar
form of government totalitarianism
in which virtually no facet
of native life remains uninfluenced
by the state." Severe conditions
clearly required major initiatives
by Ottawa and the waves
of teachers, nurses, doctors
and administrators arriving
were mostly well-intentioned
and dedicated individuals.
The health and other programs
they administered were unfortunately
fashioned solely on Inner
Canadian perceptions, and
were often applied firmly
against the grain of aboriginal
culture.
One
major consequence of Ottawa’s
new programs was the end
of aboriginal life on the
land and the move by many
aboriginal families to settlements
in Frobisher Bay, Inuvik
and Yellowknife. Compulsory
schooling meant, in practice,
that unless the whole family
moved to a centre, parents
would be separated from
their children. In this
sense, many relocations
were involuntary.
The
third and current phase
which began in the l950s
and 1960s, resulted in large
measure from the search
by American, Japanese and
European companies for minerals,
oil and gas. One example
was the Pine Point mine
south of Great Slave Lake
in the 1960s, which produced
lead and zinc for international
markets. Two of the world’s
largest power stations were
built at Churchill Falls
in Labrador and on La Grande
Rivière in northern Québec;
another large hydro-electric
project on the Churchill
and Nelson Rivers in northern
Manitoba. Oil and gas exploration
and development has included
Alberta’s oil sands, as
well as the Mackenzie Valley,
the Beaufort Sea and the
High Arctic. Large amounts
of oil and gas have been
discovered in the North;
more is expected to be found
both in the northern and
western Northwest Territories
and off shore in the eastern
Arctic and sub-Arctic regions.
Several
proposals have been made
to move fossil fuels south,
most notably the Mackenzie
Valley pipeline from the
Mackenzie Delta to the U.S.
midwest and the High-Arctic
pipeline from west of Hudson
Bay to the Great Lakes.
By the mid-1980s, only an
oil pipeline from Norman
Wells south up the Mackenzie
Valley had opened. The recently-approved
proposal to move $11 billion
worth of natural gas from
the Mackenzie Delta and
Beaufort Sea to California
might still begin by October
31, 2000.
Northern
mining is a different story,
partly because of a continuing
long term decline in the
world price of many minerals.
The only major developments
in recent years have been
two lead-zinc mines in the
Arctic
--
Nanisivik on Northern Baffin
Island in 1976 and Polaris
on Little Cornwalhis Island
in 1981 -- and some uranium
mines near Uranium City
in northeast Saskatchewan.
Other mining proposals for
Labrador, Baffin Island,
northern Yukon, and northern
Ontario have not proceeded.
Economic
prosperity will, however,
continue to elude the North
in the 1990s as a number
of federal government policies,
designed to curb the federal
deficit, are undermining
an already vulnerable economy.
Northern tax benefits, which
helped pay for higher fuel
and food costs and medical
expenses, are to be limited
to an area deemed the proper
North by a federally-appointed
and southern-dominated task
force. Thousands of taxpayers
will lose these benefits
when the eligibility criteria
are eliminated which tie
the northern living allowance
to distances from a major
centre. Millions of dollars
will not be spent in these
northern communities, but
will be sent to Ottawa.
"Those folks who sit in
their ivory towers down
south in Ottawa obviously
don’t know what it’s like
to live up here," commented
Mel Hegland, mayor of La
Ronge, Saskatchewan, a northern
community that stands to
lose the tax deduction.
A
decision by Canada Post
Corporation and its political
masters, the Cabinet, to
eliminate cheap rates for
food shipments to northern
Canada will cause sharp
increases in the cost of
northern living. The rate
hikes, which are to average
32 per cent across northeastern
Québec, northern Ontario
and the Northwest Territories,
will be another blow to
northern communities as
almost everything they buy
is flown in. A grocery bill
for a family of five in
Pond Inlet, Northwest Territories
is expected to rise from
$1,300 a month to $1,600.
A loaf of bread will cost
$4.49 compared with the
present $3.45. A five-kilogram
bag of flour in small Baffin
Island settlements will
rise from $1 Ito $12.50;
a dozen eggs will cost $4.20,
up from $3.85. In Ottawa,
the same amount of flour
goes for $5.79 and the eggs
$1.55; a loaf of bread between
$.99 and $1.60. The unemployment
rate in the winter of 1989
for the NWT was thirty per
cent for natives, compared
to five per cent for non-natives.
Many northerners fear the
increases on milk, fruit,
vegetables and other basic
staples will affect the
health of native northerners
as some families will cut
back on these high priced
products.
The
postal increases, the elimination
of the tax credits to certain
northern communities, the
proposed changes to the
unemployment insurance system
claims (thus far blocked
by the Senate), and the
proposed goods and services
consumption tax (which taxes
transportation costs on
all items except food) will
hit Northerners much more
severely than most other
Canadians. The combined
effect of these measures
by the Mulroney government
will affect not only the
standard of living of northerners,
but also the growing perception
that the present government
in Ottawa neither understands
the realities of life in
northern parts of the country
nor "gives a damn" about
the well-being of northern
residents.
Sustainable
Development
The
North is a resource hinterland
supplying the metropolis
of southern Canada with
raw materials. The northern
economy has almost no secondary
or manufacturing sector:
in 1989, manufacturing in
the Yukon accounted for
only 7.1 per cent of its
economic output. Governments
are the largest employers
in both territories and
in the northern regions
of the provinces, accounting
for almost forty per cent
of all northern employment.
Real economic growth in
the North, however, depends
mostly on non-renewable
resource exploitation.
The
main source of northern
wealth in the early 1990s
lies in oil, gas and mining
development, but such resources
create few permanent jobs.
Some say that mega-developments,
such as the production of
Beaufort Sea oil, would
allow the Northwest Territories
to offset much of its current
federal subsidy. According
to John Merritt, formerly
of the Canadian Arctic Resources
Committee, a confidential
federal cabinet document
says northern resource development
income, even by the year
2000, will amount to no
more than a fifth of Ottawa’s
northern grant. Some federal
officials, said Merritt,
contend that before the
Northwest Territories receive
any oil royalties they should
pay Ottawa back the billions
of tax incentive dollars
handed over to oil companies
during the 1980s to promote
northern drilling. Outer
Canadians in some parts
of southern Canada can only
be thankful that our own
provinces didn’t have to
weather such storms of indifference
on our way to provincial
status.
Canada’s
North has been referred
to as "the biggest backyard
on the planet with untapped
potential." The land and
offshore waters of northern
Canada offer oil and gas
explorers opportunities
unequalled almost anywhere
on earth. The Mackenzie
Delta and Valley, the Beaufort
Sea and the Arctic Islands
cover an area of about 450,000
square miles -- an area
twice the size of Alberta
-- and most of it has potential
for oil and gas development.
The estimated potential
reserves in this part of
northern Canada are 15 billion
barrels of oil and 150 trillion
cubic feet of gas according
to a recent report by the
Geological Survey of Canada.
With such promise, the North
can be seen as part of the
answer to future fossil
fuel shortages for Canada,
an opportunity to find jobs
for many Canadians, and
the source of vast export
revenues. The resource potential,
however, has to be severely
discounted because of remote
location, high costs, environmental
concerns and logistical
difficulties associated
with most of the North’s
resources.
Experts
say that through the I990s,
the most valuable components
of the North’s endowment
include oil and gas along
the Mackenzie Corridor;
oil and gas in the onshore
and shallow offshore of
the Mackenzie Delta; and
oil resources in the offshore
Delta. The West Beaufort
oil opportunities are also
likely to be the focus of
limited exploration. All
this depends very much on
future world oil prices,
but Northern Canada remains
one of the most promising
areas in North America in
which to explore.
Native
peoples in the North have
in recent years become increasingly
aware of the effects of
non-renewable resource development
on their lives and cultures,
and of the potential benefits
for them of such development.
The Third National Works
hop on Peoples, Resources
and the Environment North
of 60, held in Yellowknife
in mid-1983, heard aboriginal
representatives point out
that they had not received
major benefits through employment
in the mining industry and
other sectors of non-renewable
resources, a view shared
by the federal government
and admitted generally by
the industry.
The
desire for more participation
in northern development
has resulted in specific
proposals for equity participation
by aboriginal peoples in
oil ventures. Political
powerlessness among natives
generally, and among natives
of the North in particular,
comes in large measure from
a lack of economic power
collectively. Native economic
companies are instruments
that might foster the development
of economic power within
these communities while
minimizing the socio-cultural
costs. Michael Whittington
argues persuasively that
such corporations could
be a catalyst for aboriginals
to acquire economic power
that can in turn be exercised
in a manner compatible with
their socio-cultural context
in order to acquire a greater
political power within our
national political culture.
Native people in the North
often lack the necessary
training to fill many of
the positions in the non-renewable
sector. Most of the jobs
in the resource-based economy
are filled by southerners
who return home with the
closure of mines and other
projects. Since such jobs
are usually in urban centres
and far from native communities,
those with the necessary
skills often do not apply
because they are reluctant
to move from their home
communities. The northern
non-governmental labour
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