Le Nunavut: une composition inachevée?

Abstract

L’expérience du Nunavut est basée sur un compromis entre la volonté des Inuit de reconquérir une certaine autonomie et celle du gouvernement fédéral d’assurer sa souveraineté sur l’Arctique canadien et d’obtenir une certitude juridique pour l’exploitation des ressources du Nunavut. Dans ce contexte, on peut se demander si le gouvernement du Nunavut donne plus d’autonomie aux Inuit ou s’il s’agit simplement d’une structure postcoloniale qui répond principalement aux normes de rationalité occidentales. Le concept de «composition» proposé par Latour nous offre une façon de comprendre les relations entre la gouverne inuit et occidentale au Nunavut. Dans cet article, ce sont donc les interrelations des acteurs, des visions et des institutions qui forment le cadre de notre analyse de la composition du Nunavut. Après une caractérisation de la gouverne dans les sociétés inuit, nous verrons à travers l’analyse des compromis, des institutions et des pratiques du Nunavut comment gouvernance inuit et rationalité gouvernementale occidentale interagissent au sein du nouveau territoire.The experience of Nunavut is based on a compromise between the desire of the Inuit to regain some autonomy and the federal government’s wish to ensure its sovereignty over the Canadian Arctic and secure legal certainty for resource development in Nunavut. In this context, one may wonder whether the Nunavut government is giving the Inuit more autonomy or whether it is simply a postcolonial structure that responds mainly to Western norms of rationality. Latour’s concept of “composition” offers us a way to understand the relationships between Inuit and Western processes of governing in Nunavut. In this article, the interrelationships among actors, visions, and institutions therefore form a framework for our analysis of the composition of Nunavut. After characterizing the process of governance in Inuit societies, we will see via analysis of Nunavut compromises, institutions, and practices how Inuit governance and Western governmental rationality interact in the new territory

The Prospects of Independence for Greenland, between Energy Resources and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (with Some Comparative Remarks on Nunavut, Canada)

“…This happens also because the prospect of independence of Greenland seems to actually overcome the doubts that regard the granting of greater autonomy to the territories of traditional settlement of the indigenous peoples, for example, in relation to the autonomy of Nunavut in Canada (see above, in paragraph 4) and on the basis of the addresses of the so-called post-positivist research on decolonization (Körber & Volquardsen, 2014;Rud, 2014;Joncas, 2015). Such doubts concern the possibility that the territorial autonomies are nothing more, in these cases, than post-colonial structures whose function is to ensure-according to the criteria of rationality and legal certainty of the Western Legal Tradition-the control of development and, above all, of the exploitation of natural resources of the territories themselves (Rodon, 2014b;Lindroth & Sinevaara-Niskanen, 2015;Reinert & Benjaminsen, 2015;Tuori, 2015).…”

Wildlife Management in Nunavik: Structures, Operations, and Perceptions Following the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement

“…Yet in the aftermath of these claims, some question their efficacy. They argue that the land claims, far from enabling the creation of effective systems of Indigenous governance, embody and perpetuate settler colonial modes of conceiving of land and resources, entrenching non-Indigenous values and practices-including management systems-that promote resource extraction and threaten the very activities Indigenous peoples were seeking to protect (Gagnon, 1982;Brooke, 1995;Alfred, 2005;Suluk and Blakney, 2008;Coulthard, 2014;Rodon, 2014;Kulchyski, 2015). As we shall see, for the Inuit of Nunavik the outcomes of the JBNQA do, in some ways, appear to confirm such concerns (see Brooke, 1995;Fenge, 2008Fenge, , 2013McCarthy, 2013;Orkin, 2013).…”