Should Pond Inlet get 50 per cent of Mary River revenues?

I believe that it is high time that Inuit started to ask for more direct benefits for owning Inuit owned lands; with the biggest potential development occuring on Pond Inlet IOL, I feel that it is time to ask Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. and the regional Inuit associations to institute a policy to ensure that a full 50 per cent of all revenue accrues to the owners of the IOL.

If this is drafted and approved, then each community could establish trusts and beneficiary organizations to start developing their communities from revenue accruing from their communal IOL, owned currently in trust by RIAs and NTI.

If this type of policy will not be considered, I believe it is time for communities and their beneficiaries to incorporate land corporations to manage their share.
 
Otherwise, all the money will indeed flow south, to Iqaluit, Rankin, Ottawa with nothing coming back to the Inuit of Pond Inlet, on whose backs NTI and the RIAs will possibly receive hundreds of millions of dollars.

I did not fight like a banshee to have the future of Pond Inlet beneficiaries sent out to parent organizations that still have not determined what portion the actual landowners get for having their lands held in trust.
 
Some items were deferred for future determination by Inuit, and not Ottawa, such as future decisions on Inuit lands management, including possible Inuit land corporations.

At that time, with no existing development on IOL, we felt that when it did occur, Inuit would be better off making their decisions based on their needs and aspirations and in particular, their local deficiencies currently posing barriers to beneficiary business development.
 
The underlying principles in the Preamble, as well as those listed in Article 17 should be remembered here:

Preamble

AND WHEREAS the Parties have negotiated this land claims Agreement based on and reflecting the following objectives:

• to provide for certainty and clarity of rights to ownership and use of lands and resources, and of rights for Inuit to participate in decision-making concerning the use, management and conservation of land, water and resources, including the offshore;

• to provide Inuit with wildlife harvesting rights and rights to participate in decisionmaking concerning wildlife harvesting;

• to provide Inuit with financial compensation and means of participating in economic opportunities;

• to encourage self-reliance and the cultural and social well-being of Inuit;

17.1.1: The primary purpose of Inuit Owned Lands shall be to provide Inuit with rights in land that promote economic self-sufficiency of Inuit through time, in a manner consistent with Inuit social and cultural needs and aspirations. 
 
In any event, I hope this initiates further discussion amongst my peers and colleagues in the Inuit political world.

I may become more involved in local and regional initiatives based on what transpires in the Inuit land resource management arena and more poignantly, at Mary River, Nunavut. IOL = PI-16/37G, 47H and PI-17/37G.
 
Malachi Arreak
Pond Inlet
 

Email your letters to editor@nunatsiaq.com.

Nunatsiaq News welcomes letters to the editor. But we are under no obligation to publish any given letter at any given time.

In our print edition, we usually print letters on a first-come, first-served, space-available basis. In our online edition, we usually print letters as soon as we are able to prepare them for publication.

We edit all letters for length, grammar, punctuation, spelling, taste and libel. You may withhold your name by request, but we must know who you are before we publish your letter.