President Terry Audla Panel Address, Oil and Gas Symposium
Speech: March 11, 2014
Calgary, AB
Thank you, Doug, for the kind introduction.
I would also like to acknowledge and thank my fellow panelists here: Mayor Floyd Roland, Mayor Harold McGregor, Vice President Merven Gruben and Chief James Allen. You have all made excellent points and bring a lot of insight to this discussion with your knowledge and experience.
As the National Inuit leader and President of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, I am honoured to speak to you today and represent the approximately 59,000 Inuit living in Canada.
When translated, Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami means: “Inuit Are United in Canada”. We work to advocate and advance Inuit interests across a wide spectrum of issues – be that in health, education, language, youth, environment, wildlife harvesting and use, research, economic development, and promoting our cultural perspectives and values domestically and abroad.
Our homeland, or Inuit Nunangat, is made up of four Inuit Land Claim settlement areas from the western Arctic region all the way to shores of the north Atlantic. Inuit are considered one of the largest private land holders in the world.
To put it into perspective, our Arctic homeland comprises about 40% of Canada’s land mass and 50% of Canada’s shoreline; our homeland represents a landmass somewhere between the size of India and Australia.
In this land, we know that we have rich resources at our feet and in our waters. Some of these resources have meant our survival for millennia – resources like marine mammals, fish, plants and wildlife.
Additional resources that are being found in the land, ice and water may create new opportunities and challenges for Inuit for years to come.
Inuit face many challenges in contrast to other Canadians such as life expectancy rates, high cost of living, housing shortages, health issues, lower employment and income rates, incidences of suicides among youth, and levels of educational attainment in the formal school system.
As an organization, in conjunction with our Inuit regional organizations, we are continuing efforts to address these important issues.
Despite these and other challenges, however, Inuit continue to adapt to changes and to take advantage of opportunities that come our way.
We also continue to sustain our way of life in the Arctic and that is central to our culture and our identity. For example, our wildlife harvesting, use, and food sharing is still vital to Inuit families.
Our knowledge of the environment that we depend upon remains rich and in-depth with thousands of years of shared experience to support it.
As the world gazes in our direction for the next frontier of opportunity and development, it is my responsibility to point out that the Arctic is our Inuit homeland and has been for millennia.
We will continue to be the stewards of the Artic for millennia to come.
Arctic Canada is Inuit Nunangat – the Canadian Inuit homeland – and pursuing sustainable development in Inuit Nunangat means securing and maintaining the confidence and support of Inuit.
In our history of relations with outsiders, Inuit opinions have not always been considered crucial. And sometimes not even really heard.
As a hunting and gathering people, our concepts of ownership and governance have not lined up with the kinds of legal and political systems in the European societies that brought our first sustained contact with the outside world.
Notwithstanding our mobility as hunters and gatherers within our traditional homeland, our collective sense of who we are as a people has always been tied intrinsically to the land that we have used and occupied from the time before written history.
And we can all feel the changes coming to our Arctic homeland.
As Globe and Mail Editor, John Stackhouse wrote in his paper’s recent feature on “the North”: “Our great northern span, through the territories and the Arctic, is in the midst of an epochal shift. Climatically, economically, socially and culturally – our North is being redefined in ways that will shape Canada for the century ahead. ”
We know that countries around the world – including our own – are looking towards the “North” as the next frontier.
In order to address the challenges and seize the opportunities of changes in the Arctic environment, culture, technology and economy, we require innovative approaches, mobilizing the best knowledge from various sources into concrete solutions. There are many ways to do this, but, in order to be successful, they need to involve Inuit and engage Inuit in a meaningful way.
In the last quarter of the 20th century, essentially the in the span of 40 years, Inuit have learned to better assert ourselves with respect to the future of our homeland and the future of our people.
Our land claims agreements with the Crown, and other recent political achievements have opened a new chapter of Inuit political engagement.
These large, regional and modern treaties began with the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement in 1975, and continued until the Labrador Inuit Agreement in 2005.
They form a continuous chain across the Canadian Arctic from the Alaska border to the Labrador coast, and are protected by section 35 of the 1982 Constitution Act.
They have interpretive primacy over any conflicting federal, provincial and territorial laws.
Together, these treaties make Inuit the largest non-Crown landowners in Canada by a considerable distance.
Much of this land has rich mineral potential, and our treaties have provided us with capital funds to kick-start economic development ventures.
These property rights and benefits work alongside a restructured jurisdictional world.
The treaties, directly and indirectly, have given rise to the creation of the Nunavut territory, with a strong Inuit majority.
They also form the basis of new and enhanced regional and municipal government structures and powers in other Inuit regions outside Nunavut.
The treaties have created new, more coherent regulatory machinery for the management of lands, waters and wildlife, and for the review of development project proposals.
The various proprietary and jurisdictional features of the treaties are complementary.
They govern how development will take place.
They guarantee a strong role for Inuit in the assessment of development proposals.
These agreements do not give Inuit an unqualified veto on most forms or occasions of resource development.
They do, however, create a kind of “tripwire,” with a very clear message attached.
And what is that message?
It is that proponents of major development projects in our homeland should actively seek Inuit partners.
And, in all cases, they must turn their minds to how their proposals can deliver maximum sustainable benefits to Inuit communities and households, as well as returns to their shareholders.
Inuit have worked together at the international, circumpolar level to provide the world with two key declarations as to the Inuit view on some key Arctic topics … in 2009, we released A Circumpolar Inuit Declaration on Sovereignty in the Arctic … and in 2011, A Circumpolar Inuit Declaration on Resource Development Principles in Inuit Nunaat.
For those not familiar with them, I encourage you to become familiar.
In doing so, I am confident that will you see that, particularly in the case of the Resource Development Declaration, Inuit from around the circumpolar world have provided an informed, sensible, balanced, and transparent set of principles to govern resource development that, properly and fairly applied, can meet both the challenge of securing and maintaining the political confidence and support of Inuit, and can also meet the many other tests of sustainability.
It is a pragmatic and reasonable approach.
We know that to “own our future” we must achieve a new level of economic self-sufficiency, and to do so in ways that bring our cultural values into the new economy.
And we must pursue that new economy in ways that are environmentally rational and responsible.
Inuit have a place at the decision-making table with respect to the Arctic. Inuit Knowledge remains relevant and can provide a crucial perspective in the development of research or other projects in the Arctic.
When I consider Inuit knowledge, I do not think only of local customs isolated in the past; Inuit traditional knowledge is adaptable and resilient, transforming over time as the world and landscape around us changes.
It is also highly practical, pragmatic and applicable – thousands of years of survival have depended on it.
As proof, after millennia, Inuit are here today – in fact, I am here today – because our traditional knowledge allowed Inuit to survive and, indeed, thrive in one of the most challenging environments on the planet.
Without our knowledge, our culture could not be a true Arctic culture.
In the experience of ITK, our organization established the Inuit Knowledge Centre, which we call Inuit Qaujisarvingat – or IQ for short – we have found that by providing equal space and opportunity for southerners and Inuit to work together, new and important questions arise that would never have emerged had it not been for this collaboration.
IQ has been asking the question “what knowledge is needed for better decision-making?” We have found that Inuit have much insight to provide – and that this is often the missing element in sound policy development.
IQ is working to ensure that Inuit are given the opportunity to take on increasing responsibilities to conduct research and influence decisions and priorities.
Another example: the Arctic Inspiration Prize recognizes and promotes extraordinary contributions made by people gathering knowledge and making plans to implement this knowledge in real world applications for the benefit of the Canadian Arctic, Arctic People and therefore Canada as a whole.
This $1 million CAD Arctic Inspiration Prize is awarded annually through a nomination and selection committee process which has recently been announced on their website – completed nomination packages are to be submitted by October 1st.
I encourage Northern businesses to take advantage of this opportunity to join, contribute or be nominated to the Arctic Inspiration Prize in the future.
As we work to combat troubling challenges in Inuit communities, like access to food, housing, education, and health services, we must also find ways to improve our Northern economies on a parallel track, with the injection of innovative investments, creation of new jobs and skills training and instilling renewed confidence in our communities.
We see resource development as one way we can work together for the betterment of our communities while remaining protectors of the land we rely on for food and for our traditional way of life.
Through comprehensive land claim agreements and cooperative management systems – including the Inuit Impact and Benefits Agreements, we can protect our way of life, protect our land and we can engage – as meaningful partners – with development projects for the economic betterment – and, ultimately the improvement of our communities.
By participating in events like this one, by informing and educating others about our way of life and by asserting our needs and desires, we are setting the stage for responsible economic and resource development that will bring the self-reliance and social change we have been pursuing for decades.
We continue to work together to strengthen our voice so that as the world comes knocking on our door, we can let them in – on our terms – and be able to explain to them that the best way to develop the Arctic is to support the people that live in the Arctic.
And the best way to support the people is to help us create the economic and social climate for self-reliance that respects our culture, our values and our traditions.
Thank you. Qujannamiik
NT4
