An apple in the Department of Oranges

Page 17

NASIVVIK

At the recent Aboriginal summit with Prime Minister Paul Martin, one of the announcements was for that of the formation of an Inuit Secretariat within the Department of Indian Affairs. This development should have Inuit asking, "Has a profound historic threshold been crossed here? Will Inuit affairs in government now evolve to assume its own, unique identity? Will this pave the way for an eventual federal Department of Inuit and Arctic Affairs?"

As a political hatchling on the federal scene, the Inuit Secretariat will require close scrutiny for whether it has all its parts and facilities. How high in the bureaucracy is it to be placed? Will it rate its own deputy minister? What will be its staffing levels?

These are relevant questions, because for ages, Inuit Affairs has been an apple in the Department of Oranges. It has always been an oddity, which successive ministers of Indian Affairs never knew quite where to place or how to treat.

For some years, the Department of Indian Affairs was called the Department of Northern Affairs and National Resources. Without the words "Inuit" or "Indian" appearing in that name, one had to surmise that Inuit were somewhere under Northern Affairs, with Indians somewhere under National Resources. The department is often identified by another variation: INAC, for Indian and Northern Affairs Canada. To the government of Canada, names and titles of this department have been very adaptable, with accuracy of description being a chief casualty of such adaptability.

From the 1950s to about the mid-1970s, the Department of Northern Affairs (known by Inuit as DNA-kkut) had a chain of northern administrators (known by Inuit as Inulirijiit, or "those who deal with Inuit affairs") stationed in many Inuit communities in the Arctic. This quasi-colonial administrative system was the northern equivalent of Indian agents, presided over in the department bureaucracy by somebody with the grand title of Administrator of the Arctic.

The Eskimo Affairs section of Indian Affairs was never a very prominent block in the department bureaucracy, neatly put away in some obscure corner of the old Kent-Albert Building in downtown Ottawa. For anybody familiar with the Kent-Albert Building and Centennial Tower years of the department, the old 'Eskimo Affairs section' and new 'Inuit Secretariat' don't sound very far apart. Old-timers who knew the department before its move to the Quebec side of the Ottawa River will ask, "What will distinguish this new arm from the old appendage?"

The Department of Indian Affairs has never been much of an Inuit-friendly place. In its heyday, it employed Inuit in its Arctic offices in positions never beyond the level of clerks and interpreters. It never had more than half a dozen Inuit employed in its head office, none of them in any senior capacity. For a brief period during the time of the late John Munro as minister, Inuit activist Meeka Kilabuk of Baffin Island was hired as an executive assistant to the minister. But this turned out to be a staffing aberration never to be repeated.

Inuit affairs has had an undistinguished existence as a sort of transient guest of a government department devoted to an altogether other people, the Indians. Inuit have never seen any reflection of themselves in the way the federal government dealt with them through the Department of Indian Affairs. Having an Eskimo Affairs section in the department was akin, say, to having a Scottish Affairs section in a federal Department of Irish Affairs. (One can only imagine the fuss Scots would make of such an arrangement.)

Perhaps an Inuit Secretariat can be the mark of a new era in Inuit-federal relations. It can be a fresh clean page, a distinct catalyst for positive changes more suited to the Inuit. Inuit leaders have long been pressing for "Inuit-specific" policies and programs from the federal government.

Will the Inuit Secretariat be the vehicle by which such oientations will develop?

The need for Inuit-specific federal attention is certainly there. The federal government still holds fiduciary responsibility for all Inuit in Canada. It has made periodic attempts to unilaterally off-load this responsibility, especially those relating to Inuit who live in the provinces of Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador. Inuit in four different governmental jurisdictions all require being plugged in to the financial and program resources that only the federal authority can, and should, provide.

The Inuit Secretariat might still be an apple in the Department of Oranges. But great things have to begin somewhere, and Inuit might well accept this beginning as the first small, shuffling motion toward the eventual formation of a federal Department of Apples. It can at least be a check against being shuffled off into a convenient bureaucratic Black Hole.