But to some observers, the Nunavut deal seemed more like a new way of selling ice to the Eskimos. “It was a hollow gesture in a way, because what did Canada give up?” says Jason Clay, director of research at Cultural Survival, a Cambridge, Mass., human-rights group. “Basically, nothing.” The agreement clarifies ownership within the vast area, but gives the Inuit title to only 136,000 square miles, about one sixth of the entire territory in which they have fished and hunted for hundreds of years. And it comes at a steep price: the Inuit must renounce their claim to all ancestral lands, including regions rich in oil, gas and minerals, instead settling for limited resource royalties each year-50 percent of the first $1.7 million and 5 percent of additional revenues. The Inuit will also receive a trust of some $990 million over 14 years-slightly more than $56,500 per person.
“I’m not looking for money out of this,” says Manni Thompson, a 35-year-old schoolteacher in Rankin Inlet, a town of 1,500 people in the northwest corner of Hudson Bay. “It’s more control we want.” The Inuit have wrangled with Ottawa for decades for a definition of their rights. The agreement fudges most of those issues, perhaps because separatist emotions are so heated in Quebec. “The Inuit prefer to encourage their destiny within Canada,” Indian Affairs and Northern Development Minister Tom Siddon told NEWSWEEK. “They have not indicated a desire to go a separate direction.” The deal has enraged other Canadian aboriginal groups, which criticize the Inuit for cutting a separate deal. “The government continues to insist on extinguishment of aboriginal title as the keystone of landclaim settlements,” fumed Ovide Mercredi, national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, a coalition of the country’s 592,000 Indians that is seeking constitutional guarantees of self-government.
