Servicing Indigenous Persons in a Frontier Area: the Nunavut Experiment
Abstract
In 1993 the government of Canada signed an agreement to create Nunavut as a new frontier territory in the north to give a measure of autonomy, control and responsibility to the Inuit. It is clear that the creation of Nunavut, while catering to the expressed desires of the Inuit for autonomy, will present the native peoples with challenges especially with respect to the implementation of self government and the provision of basic services. The paper provides empirical information about Nunavut and also theoretical notions regarding modernity and principles for collective choice. Five characteristics of modernity are identified and it is argued that these have had catastrophic social consequences on the Inuit. If the Inuit are to survive then it is imperative that they be allowed greater control over their lives in the harsh frontier region of northern Canada. If Nunavut is to succeed then the process for its creation must satisfy certain principles, and four have been identified. It is argued that a successful outcome {or creating a system for servicing peoples in the frontier region should result from a process which is seen to be fair, full, thorough and legitimate.References
Amagoalik, J. (1993) Benefits of Nunavut outweigh the costs. Globe and Mail, February 15, p. 11.
Arro, K.J. (1951) Social Choice and Individual Values. New York: John Wiley.
Barry, N. (1990) Welfare. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.
Berger, T.R. (1977) Northern Frontier Northern Homeland: The Report of the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline: Volume One. Ottawa: Ministry of Supply and Services.
Bradshaw, J. (1972) The concept of social need. New Society, 19:640-643.
Brody, H. (1975) The People's Land. Hammondsworth: Penguin Books.
Connolly, W. (ed.) (1984) Legitimacy and the State. Oxford: Blackwell.
Cooke, P. (1990) Back to the Future. London: Unwin Hyman.
Coopers and Lybrand Consulting Group (1992) An Estimate of Costs-Creating and Operating the Government of Nunavut. Ottawa: Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development.
Coopers and Lybrand Consulting Group (1991) Costs of Dividing the Present NWT into an Eastern and Western Territory. Yellowknife: Report for Government of Northwest Territories.
Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development (1993) Division of the Northwest Territories: Models of Geo-political Division. Discussion Paper, Ottawa: Political Development Division, Constitutional Development and Strategic Planning Branch.
Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development (1985) The North. Ottawa.
Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development (1990) The Inuit. Ottawa.
Duffy, R.Q. (1988) The Road to Nunavut. The Progress of the Eastern Arctic Inuit since the Second World War. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press.
Haar, C.M. (ed.) (1984) Cities, Law and Social Policy: Learning from the British. Lexington, MA.: Lexington.
Habermas, J. (1976) Legitimation Crisis. London: Heinemann.
Held, D. (1984) The Idea of the Modern Open State. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.
Hopkins, M. and Van Der Hoeven, R. (1983) Basic Needs in Development Planning. London: Gower.
Indian and Northern Affairs (INA). (1992) Communique, 1-9228. Iqualuit.
Indian and Northern Affairs (INA). (1993) Communique, 1-9324. Iqualuit.
Indian and Northern Affairs (INA). (1993) The Evolution of Public Governments in the North and Implications for Aboriginal Peoples, Ottawa.
Keane, J. (ed.) (1988) Civil Society and the State. London: Vesso.
Kindleberger, c.P. (1965) Economic Development. Toronto: McGraw Hill.
Maslow, A.H. (1954) Motivation and Personality. New York: Harper and Row.
Massam, B.H. (1993) The Right Place: Shared Responsibility and the Location of Public Facilities. London: Longman.
Merritt, J., Fenge, T., Ames, R. and Jull, P. (1989) Nunavut: Political Choices and Manifest Destiny. Ottawa: Canadian Arctic Resources Committee.
O'Riordan, T., Kemp, R. and Purdue, M. (1988) Shewell B: An Anatomy of the Inquiry. London: Macmillan.
Pearce, D., Barbier, E. and Markandya, A. (1990) Sustainable Development. London: Edward Elgar.
Pelly, D.F. (1993) Dawn of Nunavut. Canadian Geographic Magazine, Marchi April,20-29.
Purich, D. (1992) The Inuit and their Land: The Story of Nunavut. Toronto: Lorimer.
Radford, J. (1993) Intellectual disability and the heritage of modernity. In Rioux, M. and Bach, M. (eds.) Disability is Not Measles: Essays on Medical Construction of Disability. Toronto: Roeher Institute.
Robinson, A. (1993) Natives in NW open for business. Globe and Mail, Nov. 11, p. B1, B8.
Smith, S.J. (1989) Society, space and citizenship: A human geography for the new times. Institute of British Geographer, 4: 144-156.
York, R.O. (1988) Human Service Planning: Concepts, Tools, and Methods. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
- The contributor(s) (authors) warrant that the entire work is original and unpublished; it is submitted only to this Journal and all text, data, figures/tables or other illustrations included in this work are completely original and unpublished, and these have not been previously published or submitted elsewhere in any form or media whatsoever.
- The contributor(s) warrant that the work contains no unlawful or libelous statements and opinions and liable materials of any kind whatsoever, does not infringe on any copyrights, intellectual property rights, personal rights or rights of any kind of others, nor contains any plagiarized, fraudulent, improperly attributed materials, instructions, procedures, information or ideas that might cause any harm, damage, injury, losses or costs of any kind to person or property.
- The contributor(s) retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- The contributor(s) are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- The contributor(s) are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).
- Geography Research Forum may disseminate the content of the publications and publications’ Meta data in text, image, or other print and electronic formats to providers of research databases (e.g. EBSCO, GeoBase, JSTOR) to facilitate publications' exposure.
