NCC’s leadership remains committed to working closely with federal government officials toward rights recognition and implementing our section 35 rights to achieve self-determination, dignity, and sovereignty.
Rights recognition would allow our members to exercise and strengthen their autonomy as a collective, reaffirming our identity and inherent rights as beneficiaries of the British-Inuit Treaty of 1765
We dispute claims from other Indigenous groups that rights recognition is a zero-sum game, where affirmation of one group harms another – rather, rights recognition is key to a unified North where all Inuit are free to exercise their own sovereignty.
In 1991, we filed our first Comprehensive Land Claim submission through the Government of Canada and have been working on that journey ever since. Since then, we have achieved key milestones, including recognition as a distinct Indigenous people, the negotiation of important agreements, and growing inclusion in decision-making on the issues that affect our communities. Each step has strengthened our governance, advanced our rights, and built momentum towards full self-government.
Our claim has progressed towards true reconciliation, with Canada accepting NCC into the Recognition of Indigenous Rights and Self-Determination (RIRSD) process in 2018. In 2019 and again in 2021, former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also personally promised to finalize the implementation of our section 35 rights. Click here for a timeline of our progress on rights recognition.
Despite meeting the requirements of the RIRSD process, we continue to face exclusion. Canada has yet to finalize our Section 35 rights – placing our people in a harmful state of legal and political limbo. This delay denies NunatuKavut Inuit access to basic services that others in this country take for granted.