Academics pitch Nunavut-Greenland condo-park for disputed Hans Island

A condominium, park, free territory or new home for Santa Claus: everyone still has suggestions about what to do with Hans Island. (FILE PHOTO)

This map shows the solid black line, which is the boundary agreed between Canada and Denmark in the 1973 treaty. The broken black line is the 2012 boundary agreed on. The broken blue lines indicate 200-nautical-mile zones in the Arctic Ocean. (FILE IMAGE)

For such a small place, the 1.3 square-kilometre Hans Island continues to remain a focal point for scheming and squabbling.

The squabbles include questions about who really owns the uninhabited island located between Nunavut’s Ellesmere Island and Greenland — Canada or Denmark.

It’s been that way since the 1973 map defining their national boundaries left Hans Island out of the boundary line, because neither side could agree on who owns the island.

In 2012, Canadian and Danish ministers reached an agreement on where to establish the boundary in the Lincoln Sea, the body of water north of Ellesmere Island and Greenland, but they didn’t address the issue of sovereignty over Hans Island.

But here’s the latest scheme to solve that issue: a suggestion, called the “Aarhus Declaration” by two academics — Michael Böss and Michael Byers — to turn the island into a “condominium of shared authority.”

“The governments of Denmark and Canada should resolve the territorial dispute over Hans Island by creating a condominium of shared authority in which the Inuit of Canada and Greenland take part,” reads their declaration, presented at an otherwise serious conference on security and governance in the Arctic, held in Aarhus, Denmark.

“We furthermore suggest that Hans Island becomes an international park symbolising the peaceful relations among the peoples of the Arctic managed jointly by the governments of Nunavut and Greenland.”

However, you don’t have to look far to find more ideas for how Hans Island should be governed.

In 2006, a Carleton University student set up the Government of Tartupaluk — as the bean-shaped island is called in Greenlandic — and named himself “The Reigning Price of Tartupaluk.”

A rival group from Greenland then set up the “Tartupaluup Kommunia,” that is, the Community of Hans Island.

Now, a couple of other groups want Hans Island to become independent.

The website of “Hans Universalis” says “today, it’s your turn to seize the North Pole to make sure that it stays free and pristine. You too, lay claim to Hans Island,” by clicking here “to be on the top of the world.”

The group’s goal is to obtain “an outright repeal of all territorial claims on Hans Island,” so the island would become a territory that “belongs to no one.”

“To make it a reality, let’s claim to be the inhabitants of the island as some form of virtual citizenship,” the Hans Universalis group suggests.

The Free Hans Island movement also wants independence for the island. The movement’s website promises to provide “unbiased information about the territorial conflict between Denmark and Canada over Hans Island.”

Among the tidbits to be gleaned from that site: “The Canadian government has not denied the allegations that they plan to use Hans Island as a storage site for nuclear waste.”

And then, there are some “indigenous” Hans Islanders, called Hans and Hans, also want to be heard. These two just want to see more people come to live on their island.

On their website, they beg for company and the relocation of Santa Claus: “We hope some of Santa’s elves are female. Even if they aren’t, just having Mrs Claus around would be nice.”

They say that, as Canadians and Danes “try to win the war by building the largest and most elaborate inukshuk possible,” the people of Hans Island are suffering.

“‘Our island is small,’ said on the two Hans residents. “There isn’t really room for all of these rock piles. I can hardly get from one end of the island to the other without stubbing my toe on something.'”