Commercial fishing, Inuit rights, and internal colonialism in Nunavut

Abstract

This paper considers the degree to which the concept of ‘internal colonialism’ accurately describes the political economy of Nunavut’s commercial fisheries. Offshore fisheries adjacent to Nunavut were initially dominated by institutions based in southern Canada, and most economic benefits were captured by southern jurisdictions. Decades of political struggle have resulted in Nunavut establishing a role for itself in both the management of offshore resources and the operation of the offshore fishing industry. However, key decisions about fishery management are made by the federal government, and many benefits from Nunavut’s offshore fisheries continue to accrue to southern jurisdictions. The concept of internal colonialism is therefore a useful concept for understanding the historical development and contemporary conflicts over offshore fisheries. By contrast, Nunavut’s inshore fisheries were established as community development initiatives intended to promote economic well-being and stability. While inshore fisheries primarily benefit Inuit community economies, the growth of inshore fisheries has been hampered by small profit margins, inadequate marine infrastructure, and a dearth of baseline data. The federal government’s failure to support the expansion of inshore fisheries is a manifestation of internal colonialism, insofar as it reflects an unequal distribution of public infrastructure and research.

Book Review: The contours of colonialism: A book review symposium

“…His goal in this book is to venture some conclusions about the patterns of settler colonialism not by starting with theory but by deduction from the empirical materials at hand. While I agree with Cole that a sweeping application of settler colonial theory to entire regions is analytically dubious (see also Bernauer, 2022) and, to the extent that it skips over or bends the details of lands, lives, and histories, even sloppy, I don’t actually believe we can understand settler colonialism, historically or in the present, without critical theory, broadly defined. It is an essential tool both for questioning the epistemological frames that make things make sense (and make some things unknowable) and for drawing analytical connections between geographically and historically dispersed processes.…”

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“…Given the extremely high bycatch rates but the importance of this industry to the local economy (Bernauer 2022), is it possible to reduce seabird bycatch while promoting the commercial fishery? The conduit weirs produced no bycatch, but because they need to be set in certain river configurations, expansion of that fishing technique may not be practical.…”

Labrador Inuit resilience and resurgence: embedding Indigenous values in commercial fisheries governance

“…Lee et al (2019) demonstrate that the centralized governance structure of fisheries governance in British Columbia had direct consequences for the management of abalone, risking the extinction of this fish that is a cultural keystone species for the Haida nation. Snook et al (2018) record Inuit leaders from across the north discussing the ways that the federal government fails to honor the spirit of land claim agreements in decentralizing power over fisheries governance, while Bernauer (2022) notes that this practice is an exercise in internal colonialism that prevents Nunavut commercial fisheries from seeing the benefits of an expanding industry (Snook et al 2018). In Nunatsiavut, Kourantidou et al (2021) and Foley et al (2017) note that despite the fact that for years the Torngat Joint Fisheries Board has called for increased access to quotas in the waters adjacent to Nunatsiavut, DFO has continued to refuse this recommendation, limiting equitable allocation of the resource.…”

“…Despite advances made by Inuit for the recognition of their rights, power imbalances remain in resource management. Increasingly scholars are identifying that settler colonialism is at the root of fisheries management in North America and in the Arctic (McMillan and Prosper 2016, Todd 2018, Kuokkanen 2020, Bernauer 2022, Parlow 2022, Silver et al 2022). Settler colonialism is described as a system of power, informed by the particular obligations, expectations, and relationships of Western society (Alfred andCorntassel 2005, Liboiron 2021).…”