Word: nunavut
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History cannot be reversed, but historic change seems to be in the making. In Canada the commitment to native self-determination followed another major step: the creation of a self-governing entity called Nunavut out of the vast Northwest Territories, effectively turning a fifth of Canada's 4 million-sq.- mi. territory over to 17,500 Inuit. In the province of Quebec, persistent agitation by 10,000 Inuit and Cree Indians against the second phase of an $11 billion hydroelectric project at James Bay, which would flood thousands more acres of Indian and Inuit lands, has placed the enterprise...
ABOUT 15,000 VOTERS IN CANADA'S SPARSELY SETtled Northwest Territories made it to the polls last week and narrowly approved a plan to split the vast region in two. Once a chain of legal steps is completed, the new 772,000-sq.-mi. territory, to be called Nunavut, will become a national home for the Eskimo -- or Inuit -- of the country's eastern Arctic. It will encompass a huge area of mainland and islands stretching from Manitoba almost to the North Pole that is thought to be rich in oil and minerals...
...vote again on a complicated land settlement. The deal will offer the Inuit outright ownership of 135,000 sq. mi. and a cash payment of $1 billion over 14 years. If it is accepted, a crash program will begin training the Inuit to take over administration of the Nunavut territorial government...
Even then Nunavut ("our land") will not come into existence until the whole package is submitted to Parliament for ratification...
Louis Pilakapsi, head of the Tungavik Federation of Nunavut, predicted that the pact "will result in a better social and economic state for the Inuit people," But it must still pass muster in the federal Parliament and plebiscites in both the Northwest Territories and the future Nunavut. Dene Indians in the western third of the Territories charge that the settlement undermines their demand for total self-government and control of oil and mineral wealth in their region...