Inuitness and Territoriality in Canada PDF

1 Inuitness and Territoriality in Canada d onna patrick There are many ways to address the question of “who counts” as a member of an Aboriginal group in Canada. These include appealing to band lists, legal jurisdictions, and family histories that describe mem- bership in Aboriginal collectivities...

1 Inuitness and Territoriality in Canada d onna patrick There are many ways to address the question of “who counts” as a member of an Aboriginal group in Canada. These include appealing to band lists, legal jurisdictions, and family histories that describe mem- bership in Aboriginal collectivities. But the particular history of these Aboriginal groups means that the question of “who counts” must also include reference to the categories created to define and distinguish these groups. Such categories include those of First Nations,1 Inuit, and Métis, the three basic groups of Aboriginal peoples in Canada;2 status and non-status; on-reserve and off-reserve; treaty and non-treaty;3 ru- ral and urban; and various mixed categories derived from these. This chapter explores the question of categorizing indigeneity in Canada by examining the linguistic, political, and judicial processes associated with the notions of territory, ancestry, and belonging that shape indige- neity today. My focus will be the Inuit in Canada, although I shall be situating my examination of them within a broader analysis of Aborigi- nal identity in Canada. Notwithstanding this focus, it is worth empha- sizing that this analysis does not speak to the question of what it means to be Inuit in Canada – a question, of course, best left to Inuit them- selves. Its aim is, rather, to see how Inuit individuals and collectivities have resisted state categorizations of “who counts” as Inuit, including the institutions stemming from land claim agreements and assertions of autonomy. Two key findings will emerge from my analysis. The first is that Ca- nadian discourse about Aboriginal identities has quite generally re- sisted the biopolitics of Indigenous identities found elsewhere in the Americas, eschewing notions such as blood quantum, racial pheno- types, and DNA. In particular, the actual measurement of “how much”  Inuitness and Territoriality in Canada 53 Indigenous blood an individual has and DNA analyses reflecting this are not part of the definitions of “status” as set out in Canadian colonial policies. This does not mean, however, that a “covert” or de facto blood quantum has not been part of policies governing Aboriginal, and in particular First Nations, peoples. As we shall see, the Indian Act – a very broad piece of legislation originally enacted over 130 years ago, and governing many aspects of the daily lives of First Nations peoples – does impose a de facto blood quantum in its provisions regarding the acquisition and loss of “registered” Indian status (Lawrence, 2003; Morse, 2002). Yet, while blood quantum has played at least a covert role in policy and judicial distinctions, it has not been used explicitly to define Indian status, and is only marginally used in defining First Na- tion band membership. The second key finding of the analysis is that the construction of In- uit identity has been a process substantially distinct from that of First Nations identity. One basic reason for this is that the Inuit were not governed by the colonial state policies exemplified by the Indian Act. As such, the construction of “Inuitness” has followed a very different trajectory, guided not only by state policy and Inuit political mobiliza- tion, but also by traditional attachments to land and language. What I shall be suggesting, in fact, is that the notion of “territoriality” operates together with the notion of ancestry in shaping the identities of Inuit living in urban centres of the Canadian South as much as it does for those living in the Arctic. In order to situate my analysis of Aboriginal identities, I shall begin with a historical consideration of Aboriginal-state relations in Canada. I shall describe how state processes – in particular, those serving to cate- gorize Aboriginal peoples and to assimilate them into Canadian settler society – have determined “who counts” as First Nations, Métis, and Inuit. My point here will be that state-controlled definitions of indige- neity tell us far more about the government and the colonial ideologies governing state actions than they do about indigeneity itself. It is no surprise, then, that differences in the state’s treatment of First Nations and Inuit have had a direct impact on “who has counted” as belonging to First Nations and Inuit peoples, respectively. This historical analysis will set the stage for the second section of this chapter, which will explore how Inuit identities are articulated in urban centres as well as in the Arctic. What I shall be suggesting is that in both cases these identities are related to “territoriality,” a notion that encom- passes a sense of belonging to a “place” or “homeland” and involves 54 Donna Patrick cultural and geographical attachments to the land and to the people who have inhabited that land for centuries. Significantly, this notion is reflected in the text of the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement,4 where Inuit status is defined in terms of self-identification and “Inuit customs and usages,” the idea being that “Inuit are best able to define who is an Inuk.” Land, Policy, and the Historical Basis of “Who Counts” as an “Indian” in Canada A good place to begin the discussion of Aboriginal identities in Canada is with the historical relations between Indigenous peoples and Euro- pean settlers. Basic to this over two-century-old relationship has been Indigenous peoples’ struggle for recognition of their right to their tra- ditional lands. This has given rise to certain basic claims by Aboriginal peoples about these lands, namely, “that they owned their lands be- fore contact with Europeans, that they made treaties with the European newcomers to share the land, and that after contact they never gave up their claims of ownership” (Turner, 2006, p. 4). Canadian Aboriginal policy, set in motion over 150 years ago, aimed to reduce the “Indian” population and to appropriate their lands for European ownership. The Crown’s assimilationist agenda was carried out largely through policy and laws – and is apparent even from the names of some of these laws. These laws included the Gradual Civilization Act (1857), the Gradual En- franchisement Act (1869), the Indian Act (1876) and its various revisions, the Indian Register (1951), and the proposed White Paper (1969). Such an agenda can also be discerned in current Aboriginal policy, including the First Nations Governance Act (proposed in 2002 but never passed), and Conservative Party policy initiatives, which have emerged as neo- liberal manifestations of the same assimilationist impulse. Studying these early manifestations of “Indian” law and policy can be useful as a “tool for studying government” (Shore & Wright, 1997, cited in Mackey, 2002, p. 108), shedding light on broader issues related to Inuit and other Aboriginal groups in Canada. In particular, this his- torical examination can help us to understand the racism and sexism that informed colonial attitudes and practices and that have reflected and shaped Euro-Canadian views of Aboriginal peoples. But it can also help us to understand the resurgence of discourse about land, culture, and language that constructs indigeneity in Canada. This is because the question of who counts as Aboriginal has long been linked to the  Inuitness and Territoriality in Canada 55 question of who owns traditional Aboriginal lands and thus to issues of social justice and the well-being of Aboriginal peoples in Canada. Sovereignty, Treaties, and “Indian” Policy We can begin our discussion of Aboriginal policy in Canada with the history of treaties between Europeans and the Aboriginal peoples whom they encountered. The first such treaties were negotiated as part of military and economic alliances between European and Aboriginal partners, and were arguably seen by both sides as nation-to-nation agreements – hence the use of the word “treaty.” These included the Treaty of Albany (1664) and the Peace and Friendship treaties between the Crown and the Wabanaki confederacy (1670–1). After the American Revolution, the Crown’s focus shifted from the maintenance of these Aboriginal partnerships to the search for lands for fleeing United Em- pire Loyalists and Aboriginal peoples (Morse, 2004). From this point on, the Crown directed treaty-making in Canada towards the extin- guishment of Aboriginal title in order to open up lands for settlement of the country. The rapid pace of European settlement coincided with the need for statutes and policies to define both “Indian land” and “Indian identity” (where the term “Indian” was and still is used in the law to refer to First Nations peoples). Prior to this period, Aboriginal groups themselves defined who was a member of their society and “exercised that power of definition in a highly inclusive manner” (Miller, 2004, p. 13). This no- tion of inclusivity has been supported by numerous accounts of Euro- American settlers and soldiers being accepted and adopted into First Nations groups. The definition of “Indian” in these cases had little to do with race, biology, or ethnicity (see Miller, 2004, p. 13–14). However, statutes defining “Indian identity” served to restrict inclu- sion into Aboriginal collectivities. The first such statute in which the Canadian colonial state set out to define “who counted” as Aboriginal persons was An Act for the Better Protection of the Lands and Property of In- dians in Lower Canada, passed in 1850 in what is now Quebec. Included in the category of “Indians” were “persons of Indian blood, reputed to belong to a particular Body or Tribe of Indians interested in such lands,” “persons intermarried,” “persons residing among such Indians, whose parents … are Indians … or entitled to be considered as such,” and “persons adopted in infancy.” Included in all these categories were descendents of any of these persons (Miller, 2004, p. 16). 56 Donna Patrick Other statutes of this kind – whose assimilationist objective was clear from their names, as already noted – were the Gradual Civilization Act (1857), which included a definition about how an “Indian” could cease to be an “Indian”; and the Gradual Enfranchisement Act (1869), which was the first to mention blood quantum and which would remain law until 1927. According to this statute, no person with “less than one- fourth Indian blood” would be “entitled to share in any annuity, inter- est or rents” of the band to which they belonged (Miller, 2004, p. 32). In addition, the Canadian Indian policy of 1869, which would eventually become the Indian Act of 1876, deprived women of their status as “Indi- ans” if they “married a non-Indian … and her children – and her chil- dren’s children forever – would not be ‘Indians’” (Miller, 2004, p. 32). This provision would remain law until 1985, when the Supreme Court declared it to be unconstitutional. The result was the passing of Bill C-31 in 1985, which amended the Indian Act and entitled women and their children to regain their lost status.5 A further measure to reduce Indian numbers was contained in section 12(1)(a)(iv) of the 1951 revision of the Act. Known as the “double mother clause,” this removed Indian status from children when they turned 21 if their mother and paternal grand- mother did not have status before marriage (Lawrence, 2003, p. 13).6 This has been described as the “covert regulation of blood quantum” (Lawrence, 2003, p. 20) or as a “de facto blood quantum” necessary to establish entitlement to Indian status under the Indian Act (Morse, 2002, p. 11). In sum, “Indian” policy for generations either encouraged or forced enfranchisement and assimilation, thereby reducing the num- ber of persons recognized as Aboriginal. Although amendments to the Indian Act reversed certain discriminatory aspects – and certain amend- ments required by recent court decisions will reverse these further7 – it remains the case that the Act continues to promote a diminution in First Nations numbers. Admittedly, these categories, while unrelated to traditional First Na- tions customs or practices and intended to serve purposes at odds with the growth of First Nations collectivities, have also played a role in Ab- original mobilization. More specifically, they have served in struggles for increased First Nations autonomy and self-determination and ade- quate on-reserve education, social services, and health care. In addition, blood quantum is now used by some bands to define membership. Yet, this still does not mean that settler law definitions of “Indianness” and “Aboriginality” have become part of the everyday discursive construc- tion of Indigenous identities in Canada. One reason for this divergence  Inuitness and Territoriality in Canada 57 in the construction of “official” and personal identities might be that state categorizations and definitions for policy purposes do not nec- essarily coincide with people’s own ways of defining themselves. The lack of correspondence between these two modes of defining Aborigi- nal identities has been particularly stark in Canada, where state Ab- original policy has defined “Indianness” in the Indian Act, yet failed to acknowledge (let alone define) Inuit or Métis status until recently. I consider some consequences of this in the next section. Definitions of “Indianness” and the Borders between “Indian,” Métis, and Inuit In the previous section, I described how state definitions of indigeneity in Canada served largely to restrict the number of individuals recog- nized as Aboriginal; but I also observed that such definitions ignored distinct Métis and Inuit identities altogether. One consequence of these gaps in the state’s definition of Aboriginal people is that the state has, at times, categorized these groups as “Indians.” One such categorization was associated with the signing of the Prai- rie treaties in the 1870s. At this time, the federal government offered some Métis the choice of becoming treaty Indians or taking scrip, a promissory note exchangeable for land or cash. Government officials encouraged Métis to accept scrip, consistent with the government’s ob- jective of reducing Indian numbers. By accepting scrip, many individu- als culturally and ethnically similar to those who “chose” to become Indians were not recognized to have Indian status themselves. Another such categorization involved the Inuit, as a result of a 1939 Supreme Court of Canada case that determined that the Inuit were a federal responsibility, just as Indians were. At issue in this case was whether section 91(24) of the British North America Act, which assigned the federal government responsibility for “Indians and Lands reserved for the Indians,” also applied to Inuit; and in particular whether the Inuit in Quebec were the responsibility of the federal or the provincial government. As it happens, the source of this problem was the absence of Inuit from the original 1876 Indian Act, and thus the federal govern- ment’s failure to accord them the same rights as “Indians” – rights in- volving collective land bases (known as “reserve lands”), exemptions from taxation, and post-secondary education, among others.8 Argu- ably, this failure can be traced in turn to the fact that Inuit lands were not desired by settlers in the same way as the more settled lands to 58 Donna Patrick the south. This had meant that Inuit had been virtually ignored until the Second World War, when military and economic interests in the Arctic brought attention to the plight of the Inuit, many of whom were trying to survive after the collapse of the fur trade and were facing starvation and increased prevalence of European diseases. This led the federal government to address Inuit hardship, and it began providing assistance in the form of family allowance cheques, with the aim of eventually settling and assimilating Inuit so that they could receive other federal services as Canadians did. Although the late arrival of government intervention has led to tremendous hardship for Inuit, it has, in fact, also allowed Inuit to pursue traditional harvesting prac- tices and maintain their cultural beliefs and language, all of which remain part of defining Inuitness today – a point I shall return to in the next section. Once the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that Inuit were “Indians” for the purposes of section 91(24), they too became the responsibility of the Department of Indian Affairs. As a result, “who counted” as Inuit suddenly became a federal concern; and the federal government implemented the Eskimo Disk List system in 1941, in order literally to “count” Inuit (as part of a national census) by assigning each one a number, which was embossed on a hard leather circular “tag” on a chain to be worn around the neck. While this gave Inuit “proof” of their Inuit status, those of mixed ancestry were initially not given disks – and hence were not seen as “Inuit” by the federal government. Inuit resisted this control over who was and who was not Inuit (Smith, 1993). Inuit mobilization in the 1960s and early 1970s led to the demise of the Disk system, which was replaced by “Project Surname.” Each number was thereby replaced with an official name for govern- ment records; the head of each Inuit family chose a surname for the family.9 With this process, Inuit themselves thereby defined who was and who was not Inuit. As it happens, this question of who “counts” as Inuit is a complex one. It must take into account not only Inuit ancestry itself but also attachments to traditional territories and the linguistic, cultural, and other practices that are integral to “traditional” Inuitness – practices that have been retained in Inuit communities to a sufficient degree that they are also part of being a “modern” Inuk. This question must also take into account new forms of Inuit identity arising from political mobilization and from such contemporary processes as urban- ization. I shall be considering these themes in more detail in the next section.  Inuitness and Territoriality in Canada 59 Inuitness, Ancestry, and Territoriality Since Inuit have never been subjected to Canadian “Indian” policies that determined their status by “measuring” their ancestry in terms of blood quantum, the notion of blood quantum per se has never been part of Inuit discourse about “who counts” as Inuit. It is clear, how- ever, that “counting” as Inuit does require at least being a descendant of Inuit. The question that this raises, then, is: what factors are involved both in being recognized and in recognizing oneself as Inuit?10 The importance of being recognized as Inuit is highlighted by the fact that, historically, Inuit have often welcomed outsiders into their com- munities who were nevertheless not accepted as Inuit. One example of such an outsider was Harold Udgarten, a Hudson’s Bay Company employee and resident of Great Whale River in the early twentieth cen- tury. During fieldwork that I conducted in Great Whale River in the early 1990s, elders frequently spoke of Udgarten, who had been born at Moose Factory in 1875, spoke fluent Inuktitut, married into an Inuit family, and spent most of his life living among the Inuit (see Patrick, 2003a, p. 63). By all accounts, he had been well respected in the com- munity and basically assimilated into the Inuit way of life around the trading post at the time. Nevertheless, he had not been considered “In- uit” and would always remain part Norwegian and part Métis. What is clear, though, is that if he had had children – as it happens, he did not – they and their descendents would have been Inuit without question. In other words, being born of an Inuk parent, with ancestral attachments to land and place, seems to have allowed for an identification as “Inuk.” The significance of ancestry is also highlighted by the life histories of such individuals as Kiviaq, the subject of the documentary Kiviaq vs. Canada. Kiviaq, a lawyer, politician, and former professional athlete, was born in 1936 around Chesterfield Inlet to an Inuk mother and a white father, but grew up in Edmonton and was known only by his English name, David Charles Ward. Despite growing up not speaking Inuktitut – his father forbade his mother from speaking to him in this language – and with a much diminished sense of Inuitness, Kiviaq was nevertheless recognized by his Inuit relatives as Inuk. Similar life histo- ries can be found across the North, as explorers, whalers, traders, sol- diers, and other colonial agents had children with Inuit women. Given the acceptance of these children as Inuit, there was likely resistance to the federal government’s introduction of the Disk system in the 1940s and its determination of “who counted” as “Eskimo.” 60 Donna Patrick The Significance of Territory While life histories like Kiviaq’s reveal the importance of Inuit ancestry itself – of being descended from Inuit – they also reveal the importance of an attachment to traditional lands. In Kiviaq vs. Canada, one of Kiv- iaq’s relatives points out that he is an “Inuk born on Inuit land.” She asserts: “When we are born on the land, that is our home. That’s what we Inuit say.” In other words, it is as much ancestral attachments to land as ancestry itself that have allowed Kiviaq’s relatives to identify him as “Inuk.” Put another way, the notion of territoriality – and its linguistic, cultural, and economic associations – has been key in defin- ing Inuitness across time and space. This notion of “territoriality” as I understand it here encompasses both “traditional” land-based beliefs and practices and the transformation of these through colonial contact and local, regional, national, and global processes. In the case of the Inuit of Nunavut and Nunavik (Northern Quebec), this involves at- tachments to the land and a sense of belonging to a “place” or an Inuit “homeland.” Arguably, the current importance of territoriality to Inuit identity is related to the political movement to secure a homeland for Inuit. This movement had its formal beginnings in 1971, the year that the Quebec government announced the first phase of the James Bay Hydroelec- tric Development Project, sparking resistance by the Cree and Inuit of Northern Quebec, who mobilized to try to stop the project. Mobiliza- tion by both Aboriginal groups led to the ratification of the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement in 1975. More recent mobilization has led to further negotiations between the Quebec Inuit, the federal gov- ernment, and the province of Quebec to put in place an Inuit govern- ment for Nunavik (known in French as the “gouvernement régional du Nunavik” and in Inuktitut as “Nunaviup Kavamanga”) (George, 2007). In- terestingly, 1971 was also the year that the pan-Inuit organization called the Inuit Tapirisat of Canada (ITC) was created. This organization was instrumental in the founding of the Tunngavik Federation of Nunavut (TFN), which negotiated the comprehensive land claims agreement culminating in the formation of Nunavut in 1999. Inuit mobilization around land claims negotiations – which affected virtually all Inuit, who were involved as a collectivity – introduced new forms of defining Inuitness based on territoriality.11 Significantly, this mobilization arose when Inuit language, culture, and economic har- vesting practices were still part of everyday life. While many younger Inuit had learned English or French, virtually all Inuit in the North still  Inuitness and Territoriality in Canada 61 spoke Inuktitut and lived their everyday lives according to Inuit social and cultural values. Relatively late colonization of Inuit lands via fed- eral policy and the lack of a settler insurgence, as already mentioned, have meant that Inuit continue to have a distinctive “territorial” iden- tity, including strong attachments to traditional lands, language, and culture. Yet this “traditional” identity, closely tied to ancestral lands and prac- tices, currently faces at least two challenges. One is the rapid process of “modernization” that the North has also been undergoing, which is allowing Inuit to gain services and infrastructure enjoyed in the South. The difficulty here is that this process and the institutional structures associated with it remain highly “Euro-Canadian” in form, despite at- tempts to “Inuise” them. The other is the rapid urbanization of the Inuit (and other Aboriginal peoples), which challenges their attachments to traditional lands, language, and culture. This means that the relation of territoriality to modern Inuit identi- ties is a highly complex one. In what follows, I describe some of this complexity in order to provide some insight into the basis of Inuitness and the often contradictory social realities that are faced by Inuit in Canada today. My examples draw on land and locality, language and pluralingualism, and deterritorialization and reterritorialization in ur- ban centres. Land, Locality, and Identity The most basic form of territoriality is attachment to particular lands – although processes of modernization have altered even this form of territoriality, as we shall see. In general, we might think of Inuitness as including attachments to particular places associated with nuna – an Inuktitut word usually translated as “land,” although “it can also mean ‘total habitat’ including the sea, the ice, the mountains, the air, the ani- mals, fish, and even souls and memories of events and the people who live in the past” (Jessen Williamson, 2006, p. 19; see also Nuttall, 1992). These habitats involve the space, usually some distance beyond the set- tlement, where families have hunted, fished, and lived for generations. In Inuktitut, one can express one’s attachment to particular places by means of certain suffixes. Jessen Williamson (2006) notes that “as an Inuk, one usually identifies oneself as ‘of a certain area’ using the suffix ‘mioq’12 [which] … implies a strong sense of affinity with the dialect- group-identified area of nuna; it is an acknowledgement of one’s own relation to the land of birth.” 62 Donna Patrick With settlement, however, the idea of belonging to a particular area of nuna has been transformed. The use of place names as identifying markers links smaller groups, such as those of family or clan, to the larger groups that are related to settlements and to still larger regional “territories.” In other words, one can see identity, including linguistic and “dialect-group” identity, coalescing around settlements and the regions in which settlements are grouped. Transformations of space have also included the mapping and naming of territories: Nunatsiavut (Labrador), Nunavik (Quebec), Inuvialuit (NWT), and Nunavut (NT). In addition, supranational organizations such as the Inuit Circumpo- lar Council (ICC)13 offer supranational forms of Inuit identity. Accord- ing to the ICC charter, the Inuit are “indigenous members of the Inuit homeland recognized by Inuit as being members of their people and shall include the Inupiat, Yupik (Alaska), Inuit, Inuvialuit (Canada), Kalaallit (Greenland) and Yupik (Russia)” (ICC, 2002). This pan-Inuit view of “who counts” as Inuit has arisen out of the necessity of politici- zation and mobilization, and now overlaps with local attachments and identifications to place. Language and Plurilingualism Another aspect of territoriality, as already suggested, is attachment to the various practices associated with the land, including linguistic practices. While linguistic practices associated with earlier periods in Inuit history would generally have involved only Inuktitut,14 the rela- tion of linguistic practices to modern Inuit identities has become far more complex. According to the research that I conducted in Great Whale River in the early 1990s, Inuktitut was in daily use in all aspects of community life, despite high levels of Inuktitut-English bilingualism and some Inuktitut-French-English trilingualism (Patrick, 2001, 2003a, 2003b). However, in Nunavut, English has been found to be gaining promi- nence over Inuktitut in some contexts (Dorais & Sammons, 2000); and anecdotal evidence suggests that other communities in Nunavik are also witnessing increased English usage. In fact, English has played, and continues to play, a paradoxical role in Inuit and other Aborigi- nal communities in Canada. As a language of the residential schools that Aboriginal children were forced to attend and as the language now most commonly used in the wider society, English has represented a real threat to Aboriginal language use. At the same time, English has  Inuitness and Territoriality in Canada 63 been seen as a necessary tool for engaging with the legal and political systems of the state to rectify past wrongs, to assert Aboriginal rights and local control over institutions, and even to promote and protect the smaller Aboriginal languages that English is displacing. As such, Eng- lish appears to figure prominently in the construction of modern Inuit identity. This view is reflected in remarks like the following one, from an interview reported in Patrick (2003b, p. 133): “Since I’m Inuk, Eng- lish is my second language. The English came here and they wanted us to learn how to speak English. I really want to understand very much English.” Deterritorialization and Reterritorialization A third aspect of territoriality that figures in modern forms of Inuit identity is related to the increasing movement of Inuit to cities. Of course, the notion of an Inuit “community” itself does not rely on any direct geographical connection to traditional lands. This is because the notion of “community” is quite abstract and bounded neither by time nor by geographical space. Most basically, then, it is conceptualized by those who are engaged in culturally specific practices and are part of the social networks and institutional landscapes that form this com- munity (Lobo, 2001). Despite this interconnectedness among urban Inuit, linkages with the “territorial” North remain prevalent. This is because traditional forms of linguistic and cultural capital continue to play a role in the construc- tion of urban Inuitness; and many urban Inuit still maintain ties to their home communities by Internet or telephone or by interacting with Inuit who are visiting urban centres, generally to receive medical attention.15 These conclusions emerged from the research reported in Patrick et al. (2006), which is part of a project investigating language practices in the Inuit community in Ottawa. What we have found from interviews with urban Inuit is that the desire to be linked to the territorial North is a common aspect of Inuit life in the South. Such a desire can be seen in the remarks of two Southern-raised Inuit women, as given below: I didn’t know much about the Inuit culture, my childhood home was filled with artefacts that I took for granted and did not inquire about. I didn’t know the first thing about igloos or sled dogs, hunting or sealing, carving or throat singing. So when people did find out about my Inuit heritage and asked questions, I just made things up … As an adult, I am striving 64 Donna Patrick to learn the more tangible cultural traditions. A good friend of mine is teaching me to throat sing and as my children hear and absorb everything around them, they are learning too. Upon graduation [from university] I moved to Ottawa. I started work- ing as an employment counsellor, helping Inuit find jobs. Soon I moved on to the Inuit Head Start [preschool program], where I stayed for several years. It was like regaining the childhood I should have had. We taught the children their language, their culture, everything to instil in them that they should be extremely proud to be Inuk. Worth noting here is the role of Inuktitut in the construction of these urban Inuit identities. Particularly for those raised in the South, as these women have been, access to Inuktitut and Inuit place-based knowledge becomes an important cultural resource, not only for defining Inuitness in Southern environments but also for accessing valued Northern Inuit resources, including connections to family, heritage, and place. These women’s remarks about Inuktitut find support in other interviews that we have been conducting with Inuit parents in Ottawa – who have noted the need for Inuktitut language instruction in preschool and after-school classes for their children. This is at least in part because those raised in the South commonly fail to learn Inuk- titut, even when they have parents who were fluent in Inuktitut upon arrival in the South. As it happens, neither of these women were able to acquire Inuktitut, and it was English that had more practical value to them. This finding is consistent with what we have already seen in the Northern context, where the sense of being Inuit is linked to English as well as to Inuktitut. In this urban context, Inuit identity seems linked to an aspiration to use Inuktitut, which can be seen as an aspect of membership in community networks and practices and of an ancestral attachment to the North. Such aspirations and attachments can thus be seen to reflect the “reterritorialization” of “deterritorialized” Inuit identities. This process of “reterritorialization” is, however, not without its own problems. In particular, urban Inuit are often sidelined, not only with respect to national bodies dealing with Inuit who live in the North, but also in the public imagination. In addition, Northern-raised and Southern-raised Inuit are often at odds with each other, given their re- spective geographic, historical, and cultural positions. Arguably, these tensions arise from the forms of desired symbolic capital that Northern- raised Inuit possess: linguistic and cultural knowledge seen as defining  Inuitness and Territoriality in Canada 65 “authentic Inuitness.” This knowledge is distinct from the symbolic capital of Southern-raised Inuit, which includes competence in English or French and the social capital necessary for urban life. Finally, urban Inuit populations in Ottawa (and elsewhere) display highly differenti- ated linguistic abilities, cultural knowledge, and socio-economic status. Notwithstanding these difficulties, however, communal ties continue to be an important aspect of imagined geographies for urban Inuit, who coalesce around common activities, heritage, and a sense of connected- ness to the territorial North – even if physical “connectedness” to this North is absent (see Lobo, 2001; Howard-Bobiwash, 2003; Proulx, 2003; Weibel-Orlando, 1999).16 Seen in this light, territoriality and identity formation are as much issues for Inuit in the South as they are for those in the North. What is more, Inuktitut, English, and French (the last par- ticularly in Quebec) are all important – in the city and in the North – not just as a means to communicate and to survive, but as tangible identity markers, reflecting Inuitness in the twenty-first century. Conclusion In this chapter, I have shown how definitions of Aboriginal identity that have invoked blood quantum, racial phenotypes, and DNA analy- ses have had little currency in the discourse relating to Inuit identity in Canada – or to Aboriginal identity in Canada more generally. This is in spite of Canadian state policies governing indigeneity from the nine- teenth century onward, which have sought to use such definitions to assimilate and ultimately eliminate the “Indian.” One basic reason why the construction of Inuit identity was not significantly affected by these definitions is that such definitions largely disregarded the Inuit until the mid-twentieth century. I have also suggested a basis of both tra- ditional and modern Inuit identity in ancestry and territoriality, high- lighting the complexity of contemporary Inuit identity and its relation to territoriality. Admittedly, this essay has been tentative and exploratory in nature and has drawn heavily from my experience as a non-Inuk living and working with Inuit. This means that a more exhaustive and nuanced discussion of Inuitness is still required, which must be left to Inuit in- vestigators. Notwithstanding these limitations, the analysis presented here has, I hope, succeeded in giving some content and historical con- text to the notion of Inuit identity and territoriality. In particular, the analysis has pointed to links between language, culture, and the land 66 Donna Patrick and suggested that the construction of Inuitness is not divorced from the struggles over sovereignty, autonomy, and resource management that have characterized contemporary Inuit political and social life. NOTES 1 The First Nations of Canada include over 50 groups, such as the Cree, Haida, and Mohawk. See the Assembly of First Nations, “First Nations Population,” at http://web.archive.org/web/20070319135953/http:// www.afn.ca/article.asp?id=2918 2 These are the categories as specified as “Aboriginal” in section 35(2) of the Constitution Act, 1982. I use the term “Aboriginal” when referring to Indig- enous peoples in the Canadian context; otherwise, the term “Indigenous” is used. 3 “Treaty Indians are persons who are registered under the Indian Act and can prove descent from a band that signed a treaty.” Statistics Canada, “Registered Indian Status,” http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recense- ment/2006/dp-pd/prof/sip/Rp-eng.cfm?TABID=6&LANG=E&APATH=3 &DETAIL=0&DIM=5&FL=A&FREE=0&GC=01&GID=614135&GK=1&GRP =1&PID=97450&PRID=0&PTYPE=97154&S=0&SHOWALL=0&SUB=0&Te mporal=2006&THEME=73&VID=17726&VNAMEE=&VNAMEF=&D1=0& D2=0&D3=0&D4=0&D5=0&D6=0 4 Nunavut Land Claims Agreement, s. 35.3.1, at http://www.tunngavik.com/ documents/beneficiaryProgramForms/Enrolment%20Program%20Descrip- tion%20ENG.pdf 5 Note, however, that while Bill C-31 entitled women and their children to re- gain their lost status, it did not guarantee status for the next generation (that is, the children of these children) unless such children married status Indians. As it happens, band councils’ recognition that large numbers of “C-31s” – that is, people who regained their Indian status after 1985 – would put too much pressure on limited band resources for housing, education, and social services led the federal government to distinguish between “Indian status,” which it granted to those women and their descendents who qualified, and “Band membership,” which was granted on the basis of criteria set by band leaders. The latter could be broader or narrower than the former and involve parents’ status or blood quantum (50 per cent or 25 per cent), de- pending on the leadership (see Miller, 2004, pp. 43–6; Lawrence, 2003, p. 9). 6 See Lawrence (2003) for further discussion of this clause.  Inuitness and Territoriality in Canada 67 7 Provisions in the Indian Act that continue to discriminate against women were recently challenged under section 15 of the Charter in a British Columbia Court of Appeal case, McIvor v. Canada (Registrar of Indian and Northern Affairs), 2009 BCCA 153. Chuck Strahl, the Minister of Indian Affairs, has recently announced that the Government will not appeal the British Columbia Court of Appeal’s ruling on this case, paving the way for a more equitable treatment of women in the Indian Act. 8 This difference in the treatment of First Nations and Inuit by the federal government is the basis of ongoing legal action by Kiviaq, Canada’s first Inuk lawyer – a matter described in the documentary Kiviaq vs. Canada (2006, Igloolik Isuma Productions Inc.). 9 On this, see, for example, Ann Meekitjuk Hanson, “What’s in a Name? Names, as well as events, mark the road to Nunavut,” at http://www. nunavut.com/nunavut99/english/name.html 10 It is important to note that while blood quantum does not define Inuitness, being a descendent of an Inuk does (and thus, having a “blood relation” is important). It is also important to note that while a “mixed-race” Inuk (i.e., a person with a White, Black, or Asian biological parent) might still “officially” count as Inuit, there are different forms of inclusion and exclu- sion at play in interpersonal relations at the community level. This raises questions regarding the legitimacy of one’s “Inuit” status, or how “Inuit” one really is, based on the way one is perceived by other Inuit or the state. This point is taken up in more detail in the next section. 11 Mobilization for greater territorial control also coincided with mobiliza- tion for greater Inuit control over education, health care, law, environ- mental management, and social services. This movement for increased autonomy in the North has thus encompassed Inuit cultural, linguistic, and social practices as part of restructuring institutional arrangements and governance structures. This process has been conceived of as “Inuisation” (Quiñonez, 2003, p. 22), or the remaking of non-Inuit institutions into ones that are sensitive to Inuit needs, values, and futures (see, for example, Qui- ñonez, 2003; Berger, 2006; Simon, 2007; Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami and Inuit Circumpolar Council, 2007). 12 Although Jessen Williamson writes about Greenland and Greenlandic, the same naming practices apply to Inuktitut, which is closely related to Greenlandic. 13 Originally known as the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, this organization was founded in 1977. 68 Donna Patrick 14 However, Inuktitut-Cree bilingualism has been documented among Inuit who lived near Cree communities and were assisted by them in times of difficulty. On this, see Patrick (2003b). 15 It is worth noting that the maintenance of such territorial identities is greatly influenced by financial considerations related to the high cost of travel to and from the Arctic. For example, many Inuit in Ottawa can rarely if ever afford to visit their home communities. 16 Similar findings have been reported for other urban Aboriginal settings. According to Lobo (2001), for instance, new conceptions of Aboriginal space and place are being formed in urban centres. Urban Aboriginal com- munities emphasize participation, shared community activities, and net- works of cooperation. While these communities are linked to rural spaces and traditions – links which can often be conceptualized as extensions of rural territories – the particular nature of these linkages varies among people and communities. REFERENCES Berger, T.R. (2006). Nunavut Land Claims Agreement Implementa- tion Contract Negotiations for the Second Planning Period 2003–2013. Conciliator’s Final Report, 1 March. http://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/ eng/1100100030982/1100100030985 Dorais, L.-J., & Sammons, S. (2000). Discourse and Identity in the Baffin Re- gion. Arctic Anthropology, 37(2), 92–110. 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