ITK bosses defend election process

Much has recently been said about the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami and the election process for the ITK president.

Some of it is ridiculous, some of it may even be true, but much of it is based on a poor understanding of the nature of ITK’s current role as the national Inuit organization. As the presidents of the regional Inuit organizations for land claims area, we will take this opportunity to set the record straight.

To fully appreciate today’s situation, it is necessary to revisit some of ITK’s history. The organization was established in 1971 and was originally known as the Inuit Tapirisat of Canada (ITC). During its first couple of decades, ITK undertook an impressive list of activities and assumed a wide range of mandates and responsibilities for Inuit across Canada.

In its early years, it initiated a land use and occupancy study, established an Inuit language commission, and carried out an HF radio communication project. It went on to create the Inuit Non-Profit Housing Corp. and it took on the job of overseeing the Inukshuk Project, the predecessor to the Inuit Broadcasting Corporation. Indeed, for brief period, ITK was the land claims negotiating organization for all the Inuit of what was the NWT before division.

However, ITK’s roles and responsibilities began to change as the northern political environment grew increasingly complicated, and as other organizations matured and gained the capacity to deal with issues. Before long the Inukshuk Project broke away to become the Inuit Broadcasting Corp., the new Inuvialuit Communication Society, and Taqramiut Nipingat Inc. COPE and the Tungavik Federation of Nunavut took over the mandate for negotiating their respective land claims, and language and culture matters became the responsibility of specialized institutions,

Because of government policy and various jurisdictional divisions within confederation, the Inuit relationship with the federal and provincial governments on such fundamental issues as land claims treaty right and self-government became the domain of the regional Inuit organizations.

With the signing of treaties, the regions became the building blocks of the country’s relationship with the Inuit, and the regional organizations assumed the important responsibility of implementing many of the constitutionally protected treaty rights. For obvious reasons, the regional organizations were also in the best position to work with their respective provincial or territorial governments.

It is worth noting that the first regional Inuit organizations, the Inuvialuit’s COPE (Committee for Original Peoples’ Entitlement), was actually created two years before ITK. In the 1970’s, the Northern Quebec Inuit Association, Makivik’s successor, and the Labrador Inuit Association came into being. And by 1993, Nunavut Tunngavik was established to represent the Inuit of Nunavut.

By the mid-1990s, it was becoming clear that ITK’s role as a national organization had been affected by the fact that the regional and other specialized organizations assumed so many responsibilities. Moreover, the viability of the national organization was being seriously threatened by major cutbacks in federal funding as Ottawa sought to bring the deficit under control.

Inevitably there was a call to rationalize the relationship between ITK and land claim organizations, and the federal government saw a possible duplication in the representation between the national and regional organization. Some people even started questioning whether, after 25 years of existence, ITK was still needed.

The regional organizations considered this question, but we soon realized that we would be at a serious disadvantage when it came time to influencing federal policies and national issues if we could not speak with one voice. We also recognize the pitfalls of having the different regional presidents take turns to speak on various national issues.

We concluded that the regional organizations needed a mechanism by which we could come together to speak as one on matters of national importance. Rather than create a new entity, it was decided to revitalize ITK to allow the regions to come together to defend and promote the interests of the Inuit with federal government and nationally.

As a result, we revised ITK’s role and structure. We also updated the process for electing a president which is now based on delegate selection at the regional level.

That was six years ago, and we think we made the right decision the need for a national voice has been demonstrated on a number of locations and in recent years, a revitalized ITK has once again become any effective and well-respected national Inuit organization.

Even now, the restructuring of ITK is an ongoing issue as we consider making Inuit youth and Inuit women’s associations full voting members on the ITK board of directors. Much of our success has been accomplished by having the regional organizations work in partnership under an umbrella structure provided by ITK.

It is in this context that regional delegates come together every three years to either confirm the existing leadership, or to seek out new leadership for our national organization.

Pita Aatami
Makivik Corp.

Tony Anderson
Labrador Inuit Association

Nellie Cournoyea
Inuvialuit Regional Corp.

Cathy Towtongie
Nunavut Tunngavik Inc.