Canadian land disputes
The battle for an Inuit devolved region has it's roots in a 1973 Native American dispute with the Canadian government, across the other side of Canada, in British Columbia. The Nishga Indians of British Columbia never signed an agreement with the previous rulers of Canada, the British Crown, regarding the occupation of their lands. As such, the Canadian judges ruled that occupation of Nishga Indian lands was unlawful and that the Nishga Indians should have internal political sovereignty of their lands (Légaré 2008, p344).
This became known as the Calder case, which "gave new life and new energy to the Aboriginal movement in Canada" (Amagoalik 1994, p26).
We shall next follow the process by which Nunavut was officially created from this seed of Aboriginal self determination in the section "The road to Nunavut", follow the link below to this next section.