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Arctic Yearbook 2015
important issue remains for the Gwich’in as they work towards self-government. In most cases, the
negotiation of self-government means that the federal Indian Act no longer applies to self-governing
Aboriginal governments. This was one of the major sticking points in the negotiation of the BeaufortDelta government, as the Gwich’in were not prepared to dismantle the existing institutions of tribal
governance in favour of a new model (Alcantara & Davidson 2015). As they continue to move towards
Aboriginal self-government, these institutions may have to once again change, allowing a new form
of regionalism evolve.
By comparison, as an Inuit population in Canada, the Inuvialuit had to rely on building out their
governance regime from the organizational structures established through their land claim (the
Inuvialuit Final Agreement 1984). With the exception of the Committee of Original Peoples
Entitlement—the Inuvialuit land claim advocacy group that operated throughout the 1970s—there
were no distinctly “Inuvialuit” institutions that pre-dated their land claim. Thus, the expansion of
regional Inuvialuit governance has been operationalized through the land claims institutions: the
Inuvialuit Regional Corporation (IRC) and the Inuvialuit Game Council (IGC) (Wilson & Alcantara
2012). Through these organizational bodies, and in the absence of regional government, the Inuvialuit
leadership expanded the role of the IRC into policy areas traditionally thought to belong to
government. After implementation, the IRC not only took on the role of negotiator for selfgovernment, but also quickly moved into social program development and service delivery. This has
included the delivery of social services, income support, and public and community health programs,
among other policy areas (Wilson & Alcantara 2012). They have a role in delivering the Inuvialuit
Child Development Program, the Inuvialuit Cultural Resource Centre, and coordinating the Brighter
Futures program, accessing federal government funds to expand into these policy areas.
Despite the setback faced in establishing a regional public government, and in the absence of securing
fully negotiated Indigenous self-government, both the Inuvialuit and the Gwich’in have carved out de
facto models of regional governance. They have been constrained in their development by the tight
relationship between institutions and identity (which acted as a barrier to building a regional Beaufort
Delta government). However, by building on their existing institutions of governance, they have
transformed more narrow organizational mandates into something much more far-reaching in the
interim.
Conclusion: capitalizing on capacity
Indigenous groups in Canada and the United States have clearly moved the Arctic towards a model of
regional Indigenous governance, and today they have a role in the development of policy and delivery
of programs and services. However, the factors of timing and institutional identity have constrained
the ability of some regions to advance towards strong models of regionalization.
As a general observation, the early entrants into land claims have had the most difficultly in securing
coordinated regional models of governance. This has been true for [