Geoscience Reference
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1997, ways in which different political actors described the role of women
in political institutions, in terms of traditional Inuit culture and Western
colonial political institutions, are highlighted. Finally, in light of the failure
of the gender parity proposal, the concept of human security is analysed as a
potentially useful tool for developing other proposals related to the political
participation of Indigenous women in decision-making.
Interviewees argued that the concept of a gender-equal legislature emerged
from an awareness that traditional modes of Inuit gender relationships, lead-
ership and the nature and structure of political power and organization have
women, overall levels of participation of Inuit women in formal colonial polit-
ical structures remain relatively low, particularly in Nunavut. The assertion
that the Nunavut government cannot adequately represent the interests of all
Inuit if it consists almost entirely of males was one of the guiding principles
behind the gender parity proposal. The idea of a gender-balanced legislature
was discussed first in 1994 by the Nunavut Implementation Commission
(NIC), which was mandated by the 1993 'Nunavut Act'
to provide advice
on the establishment of Nunavut. The majority of the nine-person commis-
sion came to see the idea developed by the NIC staff - an electoral system
that would 'build' gender balance into the very structure of the legislative
assembly through a voting system in which one man and one woman would
be chosen from each electoral district - as a combination of practicality and
innovation, and a rational step towards overcoming a history of Inuit women's
Prior to contact with Europeans and Euro-Canadian bureaucratic struc-
tures, the basis of Inuit identity was the extended family unit, which was
usually led by the oldest male who took decisions 'informally, gently and
… in consultation with members of his extended family' (Duffy 1988:196).
Ethnographic analyses of indigenous northerners' gender relations high-
light that men and women were highly interdependent and that there was
a mutual awareness and appreciation of this complementary relationship
(Guemple 1986; Dorais 1988; Bodenhorn 1990; Reimer 1996). However,
the Euro-Canadian traders, merchants, missionaries and government offi-
cials who controlled the North favoured the participation and leadership
of Inuit men, a tradition that caused Inuit women to feel that their experi-
ences and knowledge were not applicable to this new Western political
process (Thomsen 1988; Reimer 1996). This was followed by the sedentari-
zation of the formerly nomadic Inuit by the Canadian state in the 1960s,
which caused the Inuit to interact more regularly with those outside their
own clan or kinship groups and reinvent and reorganize their societal pat-
terns, including what could be described as more formal, or more accurately
more Western, political organization in the shape of settlement councils
(Honigmann and Honigmann 1965; Vallee 1967). The 1970s marked the
beginning of a campaign, led by Inuit politicians and largely in keeping
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