Arctic Revolution

337 Pages·1994·16.95 MB·English

by  John David Hamilton

ARCTIC REVOLUTION
Map 1 The New Canadian North as of 1999
The NWT has been divided into two new territories - Nunavut ("Our Land") to the
northeast, the (new) NWT to the southwest. Nunavut contains the Inuit; the (new)
NWT contains the Dene, Metis, whites, and Inuvialuit.
ARCTIC REVOLUTION
SOCIAL CHANGE IN THE NORTHWEST TERRITORIES
1935-1994
John David Hamilton
DUNDURN PRESS
Toronto & Oxford
Copyright © John David Hamilton, 1994
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
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Editor: Dorothy Turnbull
Printed and bound in Canada by Metrolitho Inc., Quebec
The publisher wishes to acknowledge the generous assistance and ongoing support of the Canada
Council, the Book Publishing Industry Development Program of the Department of Canadian
Heritage, the Ontario Arts Council, the Ontario Publishing Centre of the Ministry of Culture,
Tourism and Recreation, and the Ontario Heritage Foundation.
Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in the text (including
the illustrations). The author and publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify
any reference or credit in subsequent editions.
/ Kirk Howard, Publisher
Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
Hamilton, John David, 1919-
Arctic revolution : a political and social history
of the Northwest Territories, 1935-1994
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-55002-206-7
1. Northwest Territories - History - 1905- .*
I. Title.
FC4173.H35 1994 971.9*203 C93-095351-7
F1090.5.H35 1994
Dundurn Press Limited Dundurn Distribution Dundurn Press Limited
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CONTENTS
List of Maps vi
Dedication vii
The Wisdom of Our Fathers viii
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xiii
PART ONE: BEFORE THE REVOLUTION
1 Setting the Stage 3
The Arctic Revolution: Yesterday, Today, and
Tomorrow • The Land and Its People • The Ancient
Feuds • The Coming of the White Man
2 Early Boom Years 23
Petroleum and Mineral Development • Yellowknife
• The Legends • Fighting for Democracy • Links to
the South
3 Sovereignty and Defence 38
Air Power • The Defence of the West • CANOL
PART Two: REVOLUTION UNDER WAY
4 The Revolution Begins 57
Sivertz and Hunt • Aboriginal Policy • Building a
Team • Arctic Towns • Aboriginal Employment •
Free Whites and Tied Whites
5 The Can-others Report 93
The Final Report
6 Ottawa Arrives: Thirty Tons of Paper 103
1 Native Organizations 115
All That Rises Must Converge • The Company of
Young Canadians • The Indian Brotherhood •
The Metis Association • COPE • The Dene Nation
PART THREE: REVOLUTION CULMINATES
8 Pipeliners 159
Blair and Horte • Squaring Off* After the
Honeymoon Comes Divorce • Playing Rough
9 Tom Berger's Magic Circus 180
The Report • Native Claims • Impact of the Report
Gotterdamerung • The Victims
10 Political Evolution and Devolution 208
A Historical Year - 1975 • The Government Leader
• Musical Chairs • The Drury Inquiry
11 Native Claims 238
Inuit and Inuvialuit • The COPE Settlement • Hard
Hammering with the Dene • Federal Policies
The Gwich'in Agreement • The Sah'tu Agreement
The Dehcho • The Dog Ribs • The Treaty 8 Tribal
Council
12 Living Together Today 255
Education • Division • The Economics of Survival
Women • The New Northerners
Epilogue 255
Before the Fall: Eden Lost
After the Fall: Thoughts on Burnout
Appendix: Dene and Metis Declarations 289
Bibliography 297
Index 296
LIST OF MAPS
1 The New Canadian North as of 1999 ii
2 The Northwest Territories in 1994,
Unchanged Since 1920 2
3 Rupert's Land 17
4 The Northwest Territories from 1870 to 1905 18
5 The Alaska Highway Gas Pipeline Project 795
6 Indian (Dene) Native Land Claims in the Northwest
Territories, Negotiated or in Negotiation in 1994 239
DEDICATION
Dedicated in equal measure to the great women of the NWT, such
as Agnes Semmler, Nellie Cournoyea, Bertha Allen, Suzie Husky,
Elizabeth Mackenzie, Ethel Blondin, Ann Hanson,
and Edna Elias...
...to the outstanding men like James Wah Shee, Georges Erasmus,
Nick Sibbeston, John Amagoalik, Tagak Curley, Peter Ernerk,
and Rick Hardy ...
... and to dedicated public servants like Stuart Hodgson, John
Parker, Gordon Robertson, and Ben Sivertz ...
These people, and many like them, made it possible for the
Northwest Territories to evolve from a colony into a vibrant
homeland in less than forty years.
THE WISDOM OF OUR FATHERS
The Company have for 80 years slept at the edge of a frozen sea; they
have shown no curiosity to penetrate farther themselves, and have exerted
all their art and power to crush that spirit in others.
- Joseph Robson, Hudson's Bay Company surveyor, 1752
Canada has administered the vast regions of the North for ninety years in
a continual state of absence of mind.
- Louis St. Laurent, 1953
/ would be quite willing personally to leave the whole Hudson's Bay
Company country a wilderness for the next half century, but I fear that if
Englishmen do not go there, Yankees will.
- John A. Macdonald, 1865
If the Americans felt security required it, they would take peaceful posses-
sion of part of Canada with a welcome of the people of B.C., Alberta and
Saskatchewan.
- W.L. Mackenzie King, 1945
PREFACE
I am a journalist who has been going into the Northwest Territories
for half a century. From the very first, the range of things I reported
was very wide - from the first stumbling experiments in extracting oil
from sand along the Athabaska River to the building of the Alaska
Highway and the first hard, all-weather airports. What I mainly
reported was the reaction of people to the tremendous changes around
them. I watched a canoe carrying two Indians paddling in a leisurely
way across the Slave River at Fort Smith while a Norseman aircraft
on floats took off past them. I saw the way the people of Edmonton
reacted to the American servicemen flooding in from the south in
1942 - and the pleasure Yellowknifers got from the first highway
linking them with Edmonton in 1961.1 flew in bush planes and heli-
copters, filmed bull moose plunging through mountain snowdrifts
and barges floating down the Mackenzie loaded with tightly can-
vassed oil drilling rigs. I was present (an exciting moment) when the
five Indian nations of the NWT held their first successful Grand
Assembly of Chiefs and Elders in Fort Rae.
I went north first as a reporter, but as I watched and recorded
events, I soon found I was unable to shed the fact that I was also a
man, a Canadian, and a human being. Unlike some of my colleagues,
I found it hard to separate my professional and private roles, a trou-
blesome dilemma because the functions of journalist and human wit-
ness sometimes come into moral conflict.
Here is an example: At the start of the 1970s, the search for oil and
gas on the remote frontiers was one of the great preoccupations of
both Canadian business and the Canadian government. Prime
Minister Pierre Trudeau made a speech in Edmonton that envisaged a
vast northern development with all-weather ports on the Arctic and
Hudson Bay, an "energy corridor" along the Mackenzie River to the
Beaufort Sea, and new industrial towns in the Delta.
I was a film documentary maker then, and I sold my superiors at
CBC on making a program about the first stage of Trudeau's vision,
a new highway down the Mackenzie toward Tuktoyaktuk: it would let
18-wheelers travel from Calgary to the Beaufort Sea all year round.