History will be made on April 1 when Canada gets its first Native-majority territory, Nunavut.

Voters flocked to the polls in record numbers last week to elect MLAs to the new territory’s legislature. The 88-per-cent turnout is nearly double the numbers who voted in NWT elections of the past.

“The strong message from voters was that we want this government to treat us differently,” said Simon Awa, executive director of the Nunavut Implementation Commission.

“Out with the old and in with the new.”

But not everyone is happy now that the big day is here. All along Nunavut’s southern border, various First Nations including the Crees have discovered that their traditional lands were included in Nunavut without their consent.

The Manitoba Keewatinowi Okima-kanak (MKO), an alliance of 26 First Nations with 45,000 members, went so far as to file a case in the Federal Court of Canada… five years ago. That case is still unresolved, even though Nunavut is almost hatched.

In James Bay, the ownership of the offshore islands has remained in dispute for at least 25 years. The islands are part of the Northwest Territories, but will pass over to Nunavut on April 1.

Technically, a Cree who kills a goose on one of the islands needs an NWT export permit to bring it to his community. Normally, the rule isn’t enforced in Quebec, but it is on Amiski Island on the Ontario side of James Bay.

“Cree hunters get harassed there all the time. We don’t
want that to happen to us,” said Bill Namagoose, executive director of the Grand Council of the Crees.

The Grand Council is considering legal action, “even if it would jeapordize Nunavut,” said Namagoose. “You can’t just transfer Aboriginal people to another jurisdiction without due process.”

Grand Chief Francis Flett, of the MKO, said in an interview that he is worried the creation of Nunavut may mean the extinguishment of other Aboriginal rights in the new territory.

Flett pointed to the Indian Affairs legal response to the MKO lawsuit, in which Ottawa seems to cast doubt on other Aboriginal rights in Nunavut. “Any such supposed rights to hunt, trap and fish exist at the sufferance of the Crown,” it says.

Said Flett, “We’re not against them having self-government. But certainly, they have to respect the rights we have. The government is trying to shove this aside.”

NDP MP Bev Desjarlais, who represents Manitoba’s northern Churchill riding, took Indian Affairs to task in the House of Commons earlier this month. While she supports Inuit self-government in Nunavut, she wondered why Ottawa refuses to recognize other Native claims in the territory.

“One land claim doesn’t trump another,” Desjarlais told The Nation. “The government is using the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement to get out of its treaty obligations to other Aboriginal people.”

Desjarlais said Ottawa may be ignoring the Dene because “there was a belief they would roll over and play dead.”

Indian Affairs and Nunavut authorities couldn’t be reached.