The Inuit are considered the most widespread and possibly the most well-known Aboriginal people on earth. In regards to their location, the Inuit live from the west coast of Alaska to the east coast of Greenland (Morrison 316). In the 1970’s, ethnic identity and aboriginal ethnicity emerged among the Inuit of Canada. As the Inuit developed an understanding for ethnic identity and aboriginal ethnicity, they started following the example set by other aboriginal peoples in Canada, which led these people to start negotiating land claims. During the 1980’s, many Inuit people born in the Canadian Arctic began to move to southern cities. The word “Inuit” in itself, “refers to persons who claimed a full or partial Inuit identity at census time” (Kishigami 185). In 1991, the Canadian Inuit population was 49,000 people, which meant about 17% of these people lived in the southern cities. What’s interesting to note is that some second and third generation urban Inuit populations have been assimilated into the multi-ethnic society of Canada, which is dominated by politically and economically by English and French Canadians. In an arctic village, cultural identity is more critical than ethnic identity for the daily life of the Inuit. While the Inuit, “living in arctic villages are reproducing their cultural identity through daily socio-cultural practices in appropriate Inuit ways, they usually do not need to express their ethnic identity in their daily life” (Kishigami 187). Regarding language, the Inuit use Inuktitut as a way of communication. Inuktitut also refers to the way in which the Inuit do things. A person can, “talk, hunt, walk, eat, sleep, raise children, dance, and even smile Inuktitut” (Searles 245). An identity for the Inuit is bound up as much in the details of everyday behavior as in the use of language. Inuktitut stresses the importance of action, knowledge, and ability in the articulation of Inuit identity and forms a set of cultural tests through which Inuit define what it means to be Inuit. In terms of education, Inuit people claim that schools continue to be places of racism and discrimination, and where teachers place white students in accelerated classes and Inuit students in corrective ones. These students felt that, “teachers taught and evaluated Inuit students with a set of standards and expectations different than Qallunaat (white people), which was evident in the extra time given to Inuit students to complete their assignments” (249). Many Inuit lived with as little government control as any people on earth. Communities were comparatively small and sometimes temporary, while the independence of the individual in this community was highly prized. The family was considered the basis of society, and both men and women brought a different set of abilities to their marriages. Men did most of the hunting, and made most of the family’s tools and weapons. Women, on the other hand, cooked, looked after their children, and sewed, which might have been their most important job. The division of labor was not very strict, as women enjoyed a relatively high social position (Morrison 317).

https://www.loc.gov/resource/cph.3c12765/

Inuit killing salmon with spears, Canada, between 1910 and 1925. Canada. Library of Congress.

Kishigami, Nobuhiro. "Inuit Identities in Montreal, Canada." Études/Inuit/Studies 26, no. 1 (2002): 183-91.

Searles, Edmund (Ned). "Inuit Identity in the Canadian Arctic." Ethnology 47, no. 4 (2008): 239-55.

Morrison, David A. Inuit: Glimpses of an Arctic Past. Canadian Museum of Civilization, 1995: 316-317.

Fort Good Hope is a community located Sahtu Settlement Area on the Mackenzie River near the Artic Circle. About 585 people live in the community within approximately 180 households. The main food source in this community is harvesting. Of this harvesting, meat is a major part of the communities diet, as there was an annual harvest of 100 kg of edible country meat per capita (McMillan and Parlee 436). The sources of this meat were barren-ground caribou, moose, fish, small rabbits, birds, and woodland caribou. These results were found from a harvesting survey conducted between 1999 and 2002. Of the people who took this survey, 106 reported harvesting large game (including caribou or moose) between 1999-2002. Of these 106 people, only 26 of them were responsible for 70% of the large game harvests. In Fort Good Hope, community hunting strategies may be increasingly important, specifically in the context of highly variable resources and inactive communities. These hunts are typically sponsored by local offices such as the Band Council and Land Corporation, yet they are better characterized as the result of the community assembling its resources. In 2009, the Fort Good Hope autumn community hunt had no payments to harvesters and used a more decentralized system of sharing meat premised based on the fact that the harvesters were more willing to share. Barley is difficult to cultivate at Fort Good Hope, as it is easier to nurture in the valley of the Mackenzie River. On the Mackenzie River, “a few turnips and radishes, and some other culinary vegetables, are raised in a sheltered corner, which receives the reflection of the sun’s rays from the walls of the house, but non of the cerealia will grow, and potatoes do not repay the labour” (Chambers 165). The population at Fort Good Hope and its surrounding area is split into two major groupings of Indians and Whites. These groups are very diverse, as the only thing that brings them together is a poorly organized community club. Other than this community club, there is no traditional structure of social action that brings the various segments of the community into one working social organization. There is an emerging community pattern in Fort Good Hope, that the community decisions are made by the local white residents. The Indians, “are forced by the economics and traditional patterns of their adjustment to the local habitat to maintain a very low level of integration with the Fort” (Balkikci and Cohen 42). Not until there is there is a palpable economic basis for residential life in the Fort Good Hope, the Indians participation in the community life will remain minimal, and the community itself will remain a post or trading centre.

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Finnie, Oswald S. Group at [Fort] Good Hope, [N.W.T.] 1921. Indian and Northern Affairs. Departmental library albums. Library and Archives Canada.

McMillan, Roger, and Brenda Parlee. "Dene Hunting Organization in Fort Good Hope, Northwest Territories: "Ways We Help Each Other and Share What We Can"" Arctic 66, no. 4 (2013): 435-47.

Balikci, Asen, and Ronald Cohen. "Community Patterning in Two Northern Trading Posts." Anthropologica 5, no. 1 (1963): 33-45.

Chambers, Ernest J. The Unexploited West: A compilation of all the Authentic Information Available at the Present Time as to the Natural Resources of the Unexploited Regions of Northern Canada. Canada: Library of Alexandria. (2016): 165.

Order-in-Council is a formal implementations in which numerous types of executive actions or orders can take place. They are used to formalize appointments and nominations and to establish regulations, as well as issue special warrants under statutory authority and to proclaim legislation once it has passed royal assent Technically, the Order-in-Council is an order given by the governor general or lieutenant-governor on the advice of the Privy Council. These orders are formulated by the cabinet or the cabinet committee and formally approved only by the general or the lieutenant-governor (Hallowell 10). One important thing to keep in mind is that an Order-in-Council, “is executive and not legislative in character and so, unlike the act of Parliament, cannot change municipal law” (Harvard Law Review 296). The basic classification of Order-in-Council was made by the committee on Ministers’ powers in their famous but little implemented report: “Orders of Council are of two kinds, which from the point of view of our enquiry differ fundamentally in constitutional principle: the first being that those made in virtue of the Royal Prerogative, and that those which are authorized by statute. The Royal Prerogative may be considered as what is left of the original sovereign power of the Crown to legislate without the authority of the Houses of Parliament” (Schubert 87). This would mean that the Crown can legislate by the Order-in-Council for a newly conquered country and can regulate trade and commerce in time of war. The most prestigious Order-in-Council is the Order from February 16th, 1917. This Order established a rigid blockade of enemy territory, which is commonly referred to as the Second Reprisals Order. The purpose of this type of legislation by the King in Council without the intervention of Parliament is that it is original and in no sense delegated. Statutory Orders-in-Council is in accordance with powers expressly delegated by Act of Parliament. They are a much larger, and constantly growing class. They are delegated legislation, unlike Prerogative Orders-in-Council, which are not being delegated legislation. Statutory Orders-in-Council are means of greater dignity than Departmental orders, regulations, and rules, but in principle and for our purposes do not differ from them” (Schubert 87). The Statutory Orders-in-Council is considered the most important form of delegated legislation. What’s interesting to note is, “though the Home Office is specially concerned with aliens and the Air Council with aerial navigation, the big codes governing those topics are issued not on the authority of the heads of those department but on the authority of an Order-in-Council” (Schubert 87). The department will always prepare the draft, but the official legislative act is made more dignified by being united with the Order-in-Council.

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Roberts, George P. Convention at Charlottetown, P.E.I., of Delegates from the Legislatures of Canada, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island to take into consideration the Union of the British North American Colonies. September, 1864. Library and Archives Canada, Charlottetown, P.E.I.

"War. Prize Court. Neutral or Enemy Character. Order in Council." Harvard Law Review 32, no. 3 (1919): 295-96.

Schubert, Glendon A. "Judicial Review of Royal Proclamations and Orders-in-Council." The University of Toronto Law Journal 9, no. 1 (1951): 69-106.

Hallowell, Gerald. 2004. The Oxford Companion to Canadian History. Oxford University Press: (10)