While Canada’s HDI has long been one of the highest in the world, Nunavut ranks alongside Occupied Palestine and Paraguay with respect to health and educational outcomes. With their stunning recent election victory over the Conservatives, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s new Liberal government may now have the chance to change that. Originally published by the …
Public outrage over the death of Cecil the lion at the hands of a sport hunter is calling into question the Canadian polar bear sport hunt—and threatening the valuable cultural and economic benefits that Canadian Inuit gain from it.
When the Northwest Territories achieved devolution of lands and resources from Ottawa in April, it was a historic moment in Canada’s political evolution. But a key test of devolution’s nation-building potential will be how well it supports real aboriginal-government partnership. On that score, there is cause for concern.
A star-studded constellation of Aboriginal leaders and former politicians has called for a “new partnership” to heal a breakdown in relations between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Canadians. But what can this mean in practice?
Last Friday, I was cited in a Toronto Star article looking back on Canada’s Arctic Council chairmanship, which ends with the April 2015 Ministerial meeting in Iqaluit: Canada also achieved its main goal of creating the Arctic Economic Council, a group of businesses operating in the North that is intended to share best practices and encourage economic development “This …
Despite Greenpeace’s recent attempts to align their Arctic campaign with indigenous peoples such as the Inuit, their new ‘global survey’ on Arctic industrial development continues their pattern of discounting the Arctic voice.
Recently, journalist Kevin McGwin of Greenland’s The Arctic Journal asked me to comment on the budding relationship between Greenpeace and the Inuit community of Clyde River in Nunavut. Their common cause against seismic exploration in Baffin Bay has caused some surprise, not least because Greenpeace’s reputation amongst Inuit has scraped rock-bottom since the anti-sealing protests of …
Yesterday, New Democrat MP for Vaudreuil-Soulanges Jamie Nicholls cited my article, “Nunavut, Greenland and the politics of resource revenues“, during the second reading of the Northwest Territories Devolution Act in the House of Commons. This is the second time he has cited my article in Parliament, and I’m pleased that he’s found it so useful. As …
Tony Penikett and Adam Goldenberg have recently published a fascinating article in the Michigan State International Law Review, entitled “Closing the Citizenship Gap in Canada’s North: Indigenous Rights, Arctic Sovereignty, and Devolution in Nunavut”. In this article, Penikett and Goldenberg argue that the devolution of control over lands and resources in Nunavut from Ottawa to …
Yesterday, the Nordic Council of Ministers published its second collection of essays on polar law, Polar Law Textbook II, edited by Natalia Loukacheva, Nansen Professor of Arctic Studies at the University of Akureyri. In his contribution to the collection, entitled “Destiny or dream: Sharing resources, revenues and political power in Nunavut devolution”, Tony Penikett cited …
