Inuit secretariat must be watched

Unlike many First Nations people in Canada, the Inuit have always given Canada the benefit of the doubt.

Jose Kusugak, the president of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, pointed this out in a speech given this past Monday morning at Prime Minister Paul Martin’s aboriginal summit in Ottawa.

“Canada is our Ningauk,” Kusugak said, using an Inuktitut metaphor to illustrate how Inuit have adopted Canada as a kind of son-in-law.

He went on to say that Inuit, whether they live in Nunavut, Nunavik, Labrador, or the Inuvialuit settlement region, have always chosen forms of public government to realize their political aspirations. Within these regions, non-Inuit Canadians have enjoyed the full protection of the Charter of Rights, freely exercising the right to vote, the right to run for public office, and the right to freedom of expression.

“This choice determined that Inuit would be tax-paying Canadians who see themselves as ‘more than First Canadians, but also Canadians First,'” Kusugak said, repeating a phrase that he often uses to explain how Inuit define their identity within Canada.

So in exercising their right to self-government within Canada, Inuit have always taken a moderate and open approach — unlike many First Nations groups, who seek narrow, aboriginal-only forms of government based on theories of political sovereignty.

This has made it fairly easy for Canada to reach agreements with Inuit on new forms of government — and for federal government officials to brag about them to the rest of the world. For example, on April 1 this year, Canadian embassies in Washington, Berlin, and other world capitals held celebrations to mark Nunavut’s fifth anniversary, an event that received little notice in Nunavut itself.

But at home, Canadian Inuit have received little in return for having embraced mainstream Canadian political values.

They’ve watched various federal government departments devote most of their efforts – in housing, health care, social policy, economic development and infrastructure – towards First Nations people living on reserves. (This approach, incidentally, has also annoyed Métis and the huge numbers of First Nations people who don’t actually live on reserves, especially those who are represented by the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples.)

While federal social housing construction programs in the Inuit regions – delivered by the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corp. through public governments – effectively ended in 1993, the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs continued to build housing on Indian reserves. Many federal funding programs that were touted as generous responses to aboriginal concerns were intended only for First Nations living on reserves – such as a multi-million dollar fund announced several years ago to help combat fetal alcohol syndrome.

So why should Inuit embrace public government, when public government produces so little?

Nowhere is this question more relevant than in Nunavut, where about half of Canada’s Inuit people now live. As we all know, Nunavut’s public government has been consistently starved of the resources it needs to provide even the most basic of services, especially in housing, health care, and infrastructure.

This is why ITK has directed much of its lobbying efforts towards the creation of “Inuit-specific” policies within the federal government, and the creation of some kind of office within DIAND devoted to Inuit issues. They’ve even suggested that DIAND change its title to “Department of Indian and Inuit Affairs.”

This week, it appears as if at least part of this demand has been met. The prime minister has announced the creation of an “Inuit secretariat” within DIAND, to be staffed by about 20 civil servants.

Kusugak and other officials at ITK have every right to congratulate themselves for a job well done. After much effort, they got their message across.

But despite all his feel-good talk, Martin has yet to announce any specific changes in federal aboriginal programs. He’s simply created a new bureaucratic entity, and there is no guarantee that this “Inuit secretariat” will be given what it needs to change federal policies and practices. It’s not clear who will run the new secretariat, who will work there, and what kind of relationship it will establish with Inuit organizations and the public governments that actually provide basic services to Inuit.

Canada’s Inuit organizations, especially ITK, will obviously need to carefully monitor the performance of DIAND’s Inuit secretariat to ensure that Martin’s words are backed by concrete actions. JB