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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 [105], (3) Lines: 11 to 26 ——— 0.0pt PgVar ——— Normal Page PgEnds: TEX [105], (3) six Land Claims, Development, and the Pipeline to Citizenship Pamela Stern It is perhaps overly simplistic to describe Canada as a nation of immigrants. Since 1966, however, immigration has proven increasingly important to Canada’s continued population growth. Immigration and the attendant issues of citizenship and identity provide the backdrop for a debate among Canadian intellectuals about multiculturalism, belonging, and the state of the Canadian nation (Bissoondath 1994; Kymlicka 1995; Paine 1999; Taylor 1994). Where are Inuit and other aboriginal peoples in a multicultural Canada? Are they citizens like any other? Or does aboriginality, by definition , distinguish indigenous peoples from other Canadians? The various aboriginal land claims agreements Canada has negotiated with aboriginal peoples since the 1970s seek to erase difference while simultaneously requiring its continuation. The very acceptance of aboriginal land claims constituted an acknowledgement that aboriginal peoples were culturally, historically, and socially distinct from the immigrant settler communities in Canada. However, at the same time, the particular details of the land settlement arrangements did create an opening for substantive citizenship on the part of the aboriginal peoples. Although the negotiated agreements lay out how indigenous communities are to participate in governance , doing so as indigenous peoples perpetuates (some might say protects ) difference. Thus land claims agreements expose some of the contradictions of indigeneity and liberal citizenship. In this chapter I examine some of these contradictions as the Inuvialuit in the Northwest Territories (nwt) experience them. In the modern nation-state, citizenship encompasses a variety of meanings and practices, both formal and substantive. The formal, legal position Stern 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 [106], (4) Lines: 26 ——— 6.4pt PgV ——— Normal Page PgEnds: T [106], (4) of citizenship entails certain political rights such as the franchise, freedomofmovementwithinandacrossborders ,andresidencewithinborders. More sociologically interesting than the legal criteria for citizenship, however , are the substantive aspects of citizenship. These are the civil, political, economic, and cultural benefits associated with societal membership. Citizenship , particularly in Canada, which projects itself as multicultural, often also entails the right to maintain cultural difference. Race, social class, gender , language, and ethnicity all impinge on an individual’s real and imagined rights to participate in civic life and to partake of the social and economic benefits of society (Castles and Davidson 2000). Thus while being a citizen of a society implies full membership in that society, in any plural society not all legal citizens are able fully or equally to exercise their citizenship rights. In addition in some cases noncitizens have access to many of the substantive benefits of citizenship. The acquisition of the substantive benefits of citizenship is both social and dialogic, whereby people come to see themselves and are seen by others as members of a particular nationstate entitled to all the social and economic benefits of membership. With this in mind, I turn to a consideration of some of the micropractices that shape and reinforce Inuvialuit claims to and understandings of national citizenship. Inuvialuit Canadians In 1995 when Inuvialuit leader Nellie Cournoyea stepped down as premier of the Northwest Territories to take over the leadership of the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation (irc), she gave several interviews with the press about her sixteen years in the territorial Legislative Assembly and about her vision for the political and economic future of the Inuvialuit. In one interview, printed in the national newsweekly Maclean’s, Cournoyea was asked about heraccomplishmentsasgovernmentleader.Shementionedimprovedcommunications , health care, and territorial support for the settlement of native land claims, and she noted that the government of the nwt now sits at the federal-provincial table. With respect to this latter issue, Cournoyea observed that while some other formal Canadian citizens (and she named the Quebequois) are “trying to get out” of Canada, “we’re trying to get in” (cited in Nemeth 1995: 34). Importantly, the “we” Cournoyea referred to were not only the Inuvialuit, or even northern indigenous people, but northerners in general. Cournoyea’s statement in the widely circulated news magazine, as...

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