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Sept. 29, 1976

ITC officials withdrew their first 1975 Nunavut land claim proposal after hearing various objections from people in the communities. For their next proposal, they consulted widely among the people of Nunavut.

ITC discusses revision of land claim in Frobisher Bay

Nunatsiaq News

IQALUIT — Inuit Tapirisat of Canada board members and land claims staff began a conference yesterday in Frobisher Bay to discuss issues related to land claims and internal organization.

According to John Amagoalik, director of land claims for ITC, the board of ITC has decided to take direct responsibility for land claims instead of leaving it to a committee, and the meeting will determine how this is to be done.

The meeting is faced with the problem of how to proceed towards the development of a revised land claims proposal.

Mr. Amagoalik said the Nunavut land claims proposal, presented to the federal cabinet last March, was recently withdrawn by the ITC board, after fieldwork over the last several months had indicated that people in the communities had not been fully involved as they should have been, and that there were fundamental things wrong with the proposal that the people of the North could not live with.

The basic principles of the proposal will not be changed, said Mr. Amagoalik.

But there have been objections that the structure of the Nunavut government as outlined in the proposal, based on the structure of the GNWT, would not achieve sufficient political control for northern people, since it still gives a Commissioner the power to overrule the elected council.

Another section that will have to be re-examined is the one outlining the conditions of eligibility or enrollment in land claims, said Mr. Amagoalik.

There have been fears expressed that the system as outlined in the Nunavut proposal, where Inuit must be enrolled within five years of the settlement of land claims, might lead in 20 or 30 years to two classes of natives, some with special rights not enjoyed by others.

A third problem is the mass of jobs and paperwork that the structures of land claims could produce. A Frontier College study for ITC has indicated that by 1980, 2800 full-time jobs could result from the land claims, and that only an estimated 1400 people would be available to fill them.

Mr. Amagoalik said that a revised land claims proposal will not be drawn up at this week's meeting. The ITC will merely decide how to organize fieldworkers and staff to go about finding the answers to the problems.

The meeting is taking place in the Baffin Regional Inuit Association's boardroom at building 79 and is expected to run until Friday or Saturday. As of Tuesday morning, it had not yet been decided whether to open sessions to the public or not.

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