A political miracle in the nick of time — the signing of the Nunavut Agreement

Dennis Patterson

A political miracle was achieved 32 years ago.

On May 25, 1993, a prime minister who was in his last month in office came to the Inuksuk High School gym in Iqaluit to sign the largest, most generous land claim agreement in Canada with the Inuit of Nunavut and the government of the Northwest Territories, with its commitment in Article 4 to divide the N.W.T. and establish a new public government in Nunavut.

This was the culmination of a journey which had begun more than 20 years earlier with the visionary leadership of Tagak Curley, whose dream of an Inuit homeland inspired him to found Inuit Tapirisat of Canada in 1971.

And it was Inuit Tapirisat which tabled the first Nunavut proposal in 1976 and then created the Tungavik Federation of Nunavut in 1982 to lead the struggle to settle the Inuit land claim in the N.W.T., alongside a new territory to the east.

How did a small group of Inuit leaders and the minority Nunavut caucus in the N.W.T. legislature manage to change the map of Canada and create a new territory in 1999?

This did not happen easily. The Nunavut proposal could have been derailed many times. That’s why it was a miracle.

First, there was reluctance for change in the N.W.T., where many in the territorial capital of Yellowknife and large population centres like Inuvik, Norman Wells, Hay River and Fort Smith were fearful of losing jobs and resources to a new territorial government in the Eastern Arctic.

So how did the supporters of Nunavut overcome these challenges?

First, we took a huge gamble and decided that if the N.W.T. was to be divided, that everyone — not just the majority of Inuit in the Eastern Arctic — should have a voice and a vote in two public plebiscites.

The first, in 1982, simply asked three-year residents of the N.W.T.: “Do you think the Northwest Territories should be divided?”

To win that vote, we had to persuade the larger population in the big western communities up and down the Mackenzie Valley to either support our aspirations to “pick up our blocks and go home,” as the late MLA Kane Tologanak described it, or if they had doubts, to at least not vote no and instead vote silent acquiescence by staying home, which many of them did.

The Tungavik Federation of Nunavut wisely stationed a seasoned employee and negotiator, the late Randy Ames, in Yellowknife, where he ran a quiet but effective campaign to build support for Nunavut in the western N.W.T. He sent Inuit speakers to municipal councils, chambers of commerce and town halls to persuade western community leaders that division was not a threat and could even help them advance their goals of achieving provincehood.

Also, Dene leaders like Georges Erasmus, James Wah-Shee and Stephen Kakfwi helped the cause by supporting Inuit aspirations for self-determination, urging the Dene to vote yes to division. And in the legislature, visionary non-native MLAs like George Braden, Mike Ballantyne and Bruce McLaughlin also supported the aspirations of Eastern Arctic MLAs.

The result? High turnouts in the Inuit communities in the Eastern Arctic and lower turnouts in the western N.W.T. gave us a narrow but encouraging result of 56.5 per cent yes votes in the territorial plebiscite on April 14, 1982. Western residents voted 3 to 1 no, but Eastern Arctic residents turned out in much greater numbers and voted 9 to 1 yes.

There was also resistance from the federal government.

Although in 1982, NDP MP Peter Ittinuar had crossed the floor in the House of Commons to join Pierre Trudeau’s Liberals in return for their pledging support for Nunavut, Indian Affairs Minister John Munro demanded a “continuing consensus” from the N.W.T. in support of division (we had another territory-wide plebiscite on the boundary in May 1992).

His bureaucrats in Indian Affairs insisted the land claims negotiators must adhere to federal policy and only talk about land and money in the negotiations; discussions about political development in the N.W.T. were not allowed.

So the Inuit negotiators at the land claim table made a very clever move. They persuaded the federal negotiators to substitute “Nunavut” instead of “Northwest Territories” in every reference to the territorial government as they negotiated the document. That “wordsmithing” helped gain acceptance of the primacy of creating a new territory alongside the land claim.

The final blessing for the new territory came from Progressive Conservative prime minister Brian Mulroney. He was deeply unpopular in 1993, nearing the end of his second term and probably thinking of his legacy.

He had been vilified for sending the army into Oka, Que., in a dispute over native land claims conflicting with plans for a municipal golf course. He wanted to show that he could work with Indigenous people — and the Inuit were willing to collaborate, knowing his days in office were numbered.

Mulroney also wanted to show separatists in Quebec that it was possible for another linguistic and cultural minority in Canada — the Inuit — to achieve recognition within Confederation without needing to separate from Canada.

In the early morning of Dec. 7, 1991, after a daylong meeting in Ottawa with Inuit and territorial leaders to finalize the land claim, Indian and Northern Affairs Minister Tom Siddon was persuaded that without a firm commitment to creating Nunavut, the land claim which had been negotiated for 15 years would not be ratified by Inuit.

Siddon called Mulroney and woke him up in the early hours to persuade him that without the commitment to Nunavut, the land claim would not be ratified by the Inuit. With that commitment, 69 per cent of Inuit beneficiaries ended up voting to ratify the agreement in November 1992.

From the signing of the Nunavut Agreement, in Iqaluit, the Mulroney government had only months of life left. Five months later, in the Oct. 25 national election, the new prime minister, Kim Campbell, lost her seat and led the Progressive Conservative party to a resounding defeat when they ended up with only two seats.

Then-prime minister Brian Mulroney signs the Nunavut Land Claim Agreement on May 25, 1993. To his right are Paul Quassa, then-president of Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. and Indian affairs minister Tom Siddon. (Photo courtesy of Dennis Patterson)

The signing of the Land Claim Agreement took place at the Inuksuk High School gym in Iqaluit before a packed house. Elders Naki Ekho and Leah Attagooyuk lit a qulliq and Susan Aglukark sang. Grade 12 student Annie Aningmiuq spoke of the opportunities for youth.

Exactly one month later, on June 25, Brian Mulroney resigned as Progressive Conservative party leader and prime minister but not before he had set in motion his promise to pass two federal laws. So on June 10, 1993, the Nunavut Land Claim Settlement Act and the Nunavut Act were passed in the House of Commons to settle the land claim and establish the new territory.

Those two bills, which had the support of all parties in Parliament thanks to effective lobbying by Tungavik Federation, were the last bills of the doomed Mulroney government. Both bills, 20 years in the making, passed in the Commons in five minutes — a political miracle in the nick of time!

The Hon. Dennis Patterson represented Nunavut in the Senate from 2008 to 2023. He was premier of the Northwest Territories from 1987 to 1991, and played a key role in the Nunavut land claim agreement.