Edmonton Inuk to sue Ottawa over Inuit rights

DENISE RIDEOUT

IQALUIT — Kiviaq knows discrimination. He’s known it from some of the earliest moments of his life.

When he was four years old, his mother’s Qallunaaq boyfriend moved the family from Chesterfield Inlet to Edmonton, where he says he was forced to take on a Qallunaaq identity.

“My name was changed. My identity was changed. I wasn’t allowed to talk about being Inuit because I’d have the ‘beep’ kicked out of me,” he recalls. After he moved to the South, Kiviaq was forced to drop his Inuk name and was renamed David Charles Ward.

In his school years he was beaten up again, this time for looking different than the other kids.

Kiviaq says that later in life he learned that other Inuit felt discriminated against — and that the Canadian government was the culprit.

Now, as a 65-year-old lawyer in Edmonton, Kiviaq is standing up against the unfair treatment.

He’s preparing a legal challenge on behalf of all Inuit that will see him sue the federal government for what he views as years of discrimination.

Kiviaq argues that while First Nations people have been granted access to a host of federal programs, from medical benefits to housing, Inuit are denied many of the same benefits.

Considering that he’s fighting for Inuit rights, Kiviaq was hoping to get backing from some of the Inuit organizations.

Inuit Tapirisat of Canada, the country’s largest Inuit organization, has pledged support for Kiviaq — but ITC isn’t going all the way.

ITC is heavily supported by the federal government and isn’t prepared to bite the hand that feeds it.

“We’ve taken the position here that we support his initiative and we’ve written a letter expressing that to him,” said Rob Martel, ITC’s chief operating officer. “But at this point ITC isn’t pursuing legal action or any legal support for Kiviaq.”

That hasn’t deterred Kiviaq.

“On a legal issue I don’t need support from anybody. If there’s something wrong in law then it should be corrected, whether one person says it or 50 people say it,” he said.

The fight

Kiviaq takes issue with the fact there’s no Canada-wide legislation defining Inuit rights. First Nations groups, however, have their rights spelled out in the Indian Act.

The lack of an “Inuit Act” leaves Kiviaq to believe the Canadian government doesn’t recognize Inuit.

“We’re not defined in law. We don’t exist in law in our country,” he said.

Inuit are identified in the Constitution as one of Canada’s three aboriginal peoples. The problem, Kiviaq says, is that Inuit were excluded from the Indian Act in 1939 and left without many of the benefits afforded to First Nations groups.

First Nations people are provided medical and health benefits, as well as government money for education. Indians living on reserves are exempt from federal and provincial taxes.

There’s even a housing benefit where the federal government loans money to bands or individual Indians for the construction of houses on reserves.

Kiviaq believes this is proof that Inuit are not treated as generously as other aboriginal peoples. He’s hoping the courts will agree.

To win that argument, he’s enlisted the help of Dale Gibson, an Edmonton-based lawyer who specializes in aboriginal law and the Constitution.

The pair are looking to the federal Court Challenges program to get money to pursue their lawsuit. The program, which provides funding for cases involving the Charter of Rights, has already given them $10,000 to conduct research.

In an initial report to the program, Gibson sets out the arguments they’ll make.

The report opens with a critique of the creation of Nunavut.

“The establishment of the new ‘Inuit homeland’ territory of Nunavut has diverted attention from the plight of Inuit in other parts of Canada,” the report reads.

The pair charges that the Nunavut land claim agreement benefited the Inuit living in Nunavut, but does little for the thousands of Inuit in the South. They’re fighting to have that changed.

Kiviaq says he’s been fighting for most of his life and he’s ready for a long legal battle.

“This is my biggest fight and I’m not going to quit on it,” he said.

Kiviaq and Gibson are now awaiting approval for funding from the Court Challenges program so that they can file a statement of claim in the federal court of Canada.