Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  [Witness speaks in Inuktitut] My name is Aluki Kotierk. I'm the president of Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. I want to thank you for the invitation to come and make a presentation to you today, and I want to offer some praise. When I walked into the Parliament building this morning, the

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Qujannamiik. In terms of the agreement, the Nunavut Agreement was signed in 1993, and on April 30, 1990, the agreement in principle was signed in the community I'm from. I was a 15-year-old girl watching Minister Tom Siddon and the president of NTI, Paul Quassa, signing that agr

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Qujannamiik. I will be able to provide detailed information in terms of numbers, but in generalities I can talk about the footprint of the territorial government. There are about 3,000 employees for the territorial government, and 50% of that number are Inuit employees. In terms

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  That is exactly what we're talking about. The public service is one of the biggest employers in our territory, so if we're able to do a good job to ensure that Inuit can get public service jobs, not only will it be good for Inuit and their households but, as I said, it will make

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  We have a copy that we'll provide to the clerk.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  They have not been. That's the short answer. That was why the Land Claims Agreement Coalition was established: we recognized that our land claims agreements were not being implemented. That was a commonality amongst modern treaties. We came together in 2003 to talk about that and

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I agree. I totally agree that it's not appreciated enough, but if I may take this liberty, I recognize that there's a large land mass, but I like to focus on the people. I think that not implementing the land claims agreements is having a negative impact on our people. I think th

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yes, I think it would be ideal to have participant funding so that Inuit groups at the community level who could potentially be impacted by various developments happening in their backyard would be able to build up the capacity, get the technical information, and be able to have

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I think there is an additional thing that could happen. I mentioned earlier that the OAG had done some reviews on four modern treaties. I think it's important that there be a modern treaty implementation review commission that would be able to review and monitor how all the moder

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yes.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  The signing of the Nunavut agreement...? Has it been a good thing...?

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yes. The reason I say yes is that it gave us a sense of hope. Now we have the structure in the agreement that outlines how that needs to be achieved. The problem we have is with the implementation of it. I think that if we were able to implement it, then we would achieve the drea

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I like that question, because if I were part of the negotiation, I think I would sign off on it, but I would add more things that were related to language, culture, social issues, and education. For me, I think those are things that could have been highlighted more to strengthen

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yes. I would give them that advice: try to incorporate some of these things that I think could have been strengthened in our agreement.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I think you made reference to 30,000 feet. I'm going to go a bit higher and say that as Inuit enrolled under the Nunavut agreement we're also Canadians. When I look at the nation-building of this country and I know that the federal government has made investments into the railway