Aboriginal self-determination and resource development activity - Environmental and Human Security in the Arctic - page 196

Vuntut Gwitchin
Right next door in the Yukon, in February 1995, the VGFN of Old Crow
signed its comprehensive land claim agreement, awarding its 300 citizens
7,744sq. kilometres with territory and CAD$19 million in cash compensa-
tion . 3 Although there were not huge resource pressures at the time, there was
always the threat of natural resource development as well as the issues sur-
rounding it. As one VGFN official remarked in an interview on 20 September
2007, 'There was a sense in that the north was gonna boom in some way, the
pipeline, you know there were all these developments that were not quite in
the Yukon but that could have an impact on the Yukon.'
He elaborates:
So with the Alaska highway gas pipeline you had a major construction
project that was going to impact a huge chunk of the population, you
also had the Dempster lateral as an add-on project that would capture the
other Yukon communities. So there wasn't a resource extraction issue but
it was a resource-related issue that was a bit of a driver.
Because First Nations' interests often collide with strong economic forces sup-
porting resource development, issues of political security are as important
as, if not more than, economic security (Deiter and Rude 2005:21). In some
cases, where Aboriginal groups have been pressed to concede either cash or
land to achieve a final agreement with the state, they have given up cash
because, as Joe Linklater, Vuntut Gwitchin Chief, explained in an interview
on 5 September 2000, 'you can always make money grow. So you can earn
it back. But you can't make land grow.' This is because the land is not just
something to be protected, it is their home and the basis for their survival.
While the cash compensation element of land claims is critical to the trans-
formation of material relations between Aboriginal peoples and the state, it
is not the sole motivating factor. Rather, the overall thrust of land claims is
to improve the socio-economic condition of Aboriginal peoples. And as the
state searches for ways in which to alleviate the financial burden posed by
Aboriginal dependency (poverty is expensive!), land claims offer an excellent
opportunity to redistribute financial responsibility for economic develop-
ment, shifting it from the government to the private sector and to Aboriginal
groups. Indeed, land claims are as much (if not more) about stimulating
regional economic development, from clarifying title to infusing the region
with money, as they are about settling claims to land (see Slowey 2008).
In contrast to the Inuvialuit, the Vuntut Gwitchin walked away from
an initial settlement with the territory because it lacked enough self-gov-
ernment. While self-government was not an option in 1984, by 1995 a
federal policy was in place and it was clear to the VGFN that powers of
self-government had to be included in any negotiated agreement. They not