Two old enemies warily extend hands across the 60th parallel

IQALUIT — Inuit and Dene have agreed to talk.

It’s a simple understanding, but one that means very different things to the parties involved.

On Jan. 23, Inuit and the Dene leaders of bands from northern Manitoba and Saskatchewan issued a communiqué saying they would “work together in a spirit of friendship and cooperation.”

In this short release, the Sayisi Dene of Manitoba and the Northlands First Nation of Saskatchewan, along with Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. and the Kivalliq Inuit Association, agreed to work towards the signing of a “treaty of friendship and co-operation.”

The groups agreed to meet again in three months.

But Inuit are still uneasy over how to deal with the nations’ joint claim to lands in Nunavut.

“They’re looking at a big pie,” said NTI president Paul Quassa about the Dene interest in Nunavut.

Quassa said the Dene are probably eyeing more than hunting rights in Nunavut. The Nunavut land claim’s agreement’s articles 40 and 41 already affirm reciprocal hunting and fishing rights for Dene and Inuit on each other’s lands.

In fact, Quassa suspects the Dene are lobbying the federal government to have some part of Nunavummiut’s selected lands.

But Quassa said NTI won’t budge on its constitutionally guaranteed land rights.

“If they [the Dene] want something, they’ll have to give us the same thing,” Quassa said.

The Dene traditionally hunted, trapped and fished in the lands just below the tree line, which are now in Nunavut. Likewise, the Inuit who now live in the communities of Arviat and Rankin Inlet often ventured into Manitoba.

No one is denying the traditional joint-use of the land in question by both Inuit and Dene, although the Dene place more emphasis on it.

According to Ila Bussidor, chief of the Sayisi Dene, everyone needs to remember that the existing political borders were imposed on native peoples.

“For hundred of years our people respected each other because it was known the land was part of the people,” Bussidor said. “It didn’t belong to anyone, but was created by God for the use of the Dene and Inuit in general.”

Bussidor said Dene want to work “nation to nation” with Inuit, drawing on their compassion and sense of kinship as native peoples, perhaps, to gain what the federal government isn’t willing to give.

The Sayisi Dene, in particular, have had a rough deal. Relocated in the 1950s to Churchill, Man., around a third of the band died due to wretched conditions.

They returned 25 years ago to Tadoule Lake, but there, unemployment and social problems hound the 650 or so remaining band members.

A treaty with the federal government defines the Dene’s aboriginal land rights in Manitoba. Treaty 8 was signed in the late 1800s, and extinguished their claim to lands south of 60.

In 1993 the Dene lost a bid to have their rights included in the Nunavut land claims agreement. They then filed at least two court cases against the federal government

These outstanding legal challenges have been thrown into what’s called case management, a kind of mediation, which is supposed to reconcile the two parties. It involves only the federal government and the Dene.

And due to their strict confidentiality agreement, Inuit and officials from Nunavut and Manitoba are in the dark as to what exactly is on the table.

With negotiations cloaked in secrecy, everyone is left wondering what more the Dene could want — perhaps land, or maybe a cut in a future mineral-development projects.

Manitoba’s minister of native affairs, Eric Robinson, who is also the MLA for Churchill, still views the move towards more official dialogue between Dene and Inuit as a positive step.

Good relations between the two groups could be essential for achieving some of the goals set by both Nunavut and Manitoba, which include closer economic links and, eventually, the construction of a power grid and road that would necessarily pass through Dene land.

The KIA has a good deal of interest in learning more about what the Dene’s intentions in the Kivalliq are. An open dialogue, said KIA president Paul Kaludjak, won’t hurt.

“We told them the door is not shut, the door is open,” Kaludjak said.