Women’s participation in decision making - Environmental and Human Security in the Arctic - page 210

which guarantees Indigenous peoples' representation in public institutions.
For example, in the NWT and Nunavut land claim agreements, public
resource management bodies guarantee Indigenous peoples' equal representa-
tion with the GNWT and Canada, and mandate that Indigenous TK or TEK
is incorporated in decision-making . 8 Within self-government agreements
currently being negotiated in the NWT, similar provisions are being made
in some regions that community councils guarantee 50 per cent Indigenous
representation. In exchange for this guarantee, the councils will exercise 'self-
government powers' attached to the exercise of Indigenous peoples' rights of
self-government . 9 C ertainly, such arrangements represent steps forward in the
struggle for Indigenous peoples' participation in, and indigenization of, non-
Indigenous political institutions.
But experiences of implementing such innovative approaches tell a dif-
ferent story. Land claim and self-government agreements are not receiving
enough funding to achieve the objectives of their design. Instead of creating
coherently Indigenous institutions, individual obligations are assessed and
funded by Canada in isolation of each other. The result has provided for the
implementation of the 'letter rather than the spirit' of land claim agreements,
according to the Canadian Auditor General, the national independent audit
agency (Auditor General of Canada 2003:1). The same is true for public co-
management institutions, where often the question of 'what is traditional
knowledge (TK)?' is as difficult and controversial as receiving enough funding
for its collection, recording and use alongside 'Western science' by resource
managers illiterate in the cultural and experiential genesis of such knowledge
(for example, Nadasdy 2004). Echoing the predictions and observations of
political philosophers, such as Iris Marion Young (1998), James Tully (2000)
and Raymond Geuss (2001), institutions created through land claim and self-
government agreements are rendered ineffective through their inadequate or
lack of implementation, inattention to the provision of mechanisms to moni-
tor and conceive of implementation as an essential part of the agreements
themselves, and the propensity of the dominant state's institutions to mar-
ginalize Indigenous voices and aspirations in the very institutional structures
set up to accommodate Indigenous voices and culture. During 2004, this
inspired a coalition of land claim institutions, including all land claim-based
governments in the NWT and Nunavut, to propose a national effort towards
effective land claim implementation, based on a common experience of land
claim failure and shortcomings . 10
Perhaps just as interesting as the problems posed by bureaucratic versus
Indigenous interpretation of what constitutes appropriate implementation
measures is the interactions between Indigenous and colonial institutions
within the NWT and Nunavut. The persistence of Indigenous institutions
alongside colonial ones creates an inherently destabilizing current within
Indigenous communities. Band council elections premised on first-past-the-
post majority voting sometimes subsequently result in chiefs and councillors