Treaty Declined

WORDS BY Charles Arnold / PHOTOS FROM the Anglican General Synod Archives, Inuvialuit Regional Corporation and O.S. Finnie/Library and Archives Canada

When the Inuvialuit Final Agreement (IFA) was signed in Tuktoyaktuk on June 5, 1984, one of the people who proudly signed his name on the document was Mark Noksana, the Committee for Original People’s Entitlement’s negotiator for Tuktoyaktuk.

The ‘Western Arctic Claim – Inuvialuit Final Agreement’ is a ‘modern’ or ‘comprehensive’ land claim that stands in contrast to ‘historic’ treaties that include the socalled ‘numbered’ treaties between the Crown and First Nations in some other parts of Canada.

However, according to Mark Noksana and others of his generation, the negotiations that led to the IFA were not the first time that government and the Inuvialuit discussed entering into a treaty.

Originally from Alaska, Mark Noksana had come to Canada when he was hired to help drive a herd of reindeer that had been purchased by the Government of Canada to the Mackenzie Delta area.

The reindeer and the herders left Alaska in December 1929, and after many delays arrived in the Delta in March 1935. During a stopover at Shingle Point on the Yukon coast, Mark Noksana heard from people there about William Mangilaluk, and about his role in having the reindeer brought to the Delta.

In testimony that he gave in 1976 to the Berger Commission, which was surveying people’s opinions on a pipeline, Mark Noksana recalled through an interpreter:

“I used to ask [people] around […] Shingle Point, ‘What you guys ask for reindeer for?’ Well, some of them told me [about a] man in Tuktoyaktuk by the name of William Mangilaluk, [a] chief […]

“I happened to meet that man there before he died, chief William Mangilaluk. […] he told me [people from the] government came down [to Whitefish Station and to Tuktoyaktuk] and [asked] him if he want [treaty] money, like Indians. […] He says he didn’t say nothing. He just going to think about it.

“[Mangilaluk had] heard of some reindeer in Alaska […] There was no caribou at all here in Tuktoyaktuk […] No caribou at all at that time. So the chief […] asked the government if he could get the reindeer for the Eskimos. […]. He says money’s no good to him. That’s what he told me. He said he’d rather get reindeer so he can have meat all the time for the new generation coming, so they can have reindeer meat all the time in Tuk area here. […] So the government back in Ottawa decided they would go to Alaska, buy […] reindeer and drive them from there. I was one of them, four years with them. That’s what happened.” (Thomas Berger, Northern Frontier, Northern Homeland, 1977).

The passage of time obscures memories, and the paucity of detailed written records in official archives makes it difficult to verify some of the things Mark Noksana talked about.

What we can say is that the treaty William Mangilaluk referred to was Treaty 11, which the Government of Canada and the Dene residing in the territory “along the Mackenzie River and the Arctic Ocean in the Dominion of Canada” entered into in 1921.

Although the understanding of the intent and the legitimacy of the treaty continues to be debated, it was the government’s position that, in return for the Dene surrendering their rights to land both in the treaty area and elsewhere in Canada, the government was to make payments each year of $25 to each ‘chief,’ $15 to each ‘headman’ and $5 to others.

Mark Noksana signing the Inuvialuit Final Agreement.

The inclusion of areas traditionally occupied by Inuvialuit in which Dene were eligible to accept treaty payments has puzzled historians; it is clear, however, that Inuvialuit were not signatories to Treaty 11, and that it did not apply to them and did not surrender their rights to their land.

Once Treaty 11 went into effect, the government was obliged to send officials north each year to pay the annuities and conduct business relating to it. For some years, this task fell to Oswald Sterling Finnie, who was the director of the government’s Northwest Territories and Yukon branch from 1921 to 1931.

Although official government records appear to be silent on this issue, on some of his annual trips north Finnie may have asked Inuvialuit if they wanted to be covered under Treaty 11. Since the Government of Canada initiated a search for a suitable reindeer range in 1926, if Mark Noksana was told correctly that Mangilaluk was in part responsible for the decision to bring a reindeer herd to the Delta, the meeting he refers to would have occurred prior to that time.

In his comprehensive book on the history of Treaty 11, “As Long As This Land Shall Last,” Rene Fumoleau suggests that discussions with Inuvialuit about treaty might have taken place as early as 1925 – thus supporting Mark Noksana’s story – when Lord Byng, the Governor General of Canada, accompanied Oswald Finnie on a trip by paddle-wheeler down the Mackenzie River to Aklavik.

From there they went farther north to the mouth of the Mackenzie River on a smaller boat. A photograph taken during that trip shows William Mangilaluk and several other Inuvialuit. This may be one of the photographs that Laura Raymond referred to many years later in an oral history interview:

“… when they had big meeting in Whitefish [Station] … they [even took] their pictures. That’s the time Peter Qarlik (Kaglik) was interpreter. They [the government] ask that chief of Tuk, Mangilaluk, what he want …”

Also in the photograph is Bob Cockney, who wrote in his autobiography, ‘I, Nuligak,’ about another meeting with Oswald Finnie, this one in Aklavik in 1929:

“We were there when the white chief Mr. Finnie arrived. There was a meeting for the purpose of giving the Inuit money such as the [Dene] were receiving. The white chief asked me if I had anything to say. I asked him what would be the amount we would receive for twelve months. He answered, ‘five dollars’. I asked the Inuit if it was worth disturbing ourselves for the amount of five dollars [Bob Cockney may have translated for some of the others who were present]. They answered, ‘We don’t want it’. I said to the white chief: ‘We have no business to do with you. Keep your five dollars. Instead of distributing it to everyone, put that money to some purpose. Everything costs so much here, and five dollars will not help us. It would be better to feed those who are in misery, the widows, the blind, the sick.’

“Chief Finnie answered that I was right, and that the Inuit would not receive the treaty.”

Reindeer herders having coffee on the last day of the drive, March 1935. Mark Noksana may be in this photo.

Oswald Finnie’s report on his August 1929 trip to Aklavik at Library and Archives Canada doesn’t mention discussions about treaty, but he did note that he met with a delegation of Inuvialuit in Aklavik, consisting of “Louis Coglick (Kaglik), Bob Caulkney (Cockney), Esau Abingukpuk (?), Johnny Komick (?), Cyril Coglick (Kaglik), Lucas Ernatuna (?), Bertram Pokiak and Joseph Simon,” about their concerns with the NWT and Yukon Game Regulations and the Migratory Birds Act.

According to Finnie’s report, they “wanted permission to kill caribou out of season when urgently in need of food. […] These natives also spoke of [...] not being able to secure ducks and geese as they had all left before the season opened ...”

At the time, under the NWT and Yukon Game Regulations, the season for hunting ducks and geese was closed from 15 December through August, and the season for hunting caribou was closed from March through August.

The 1929 meeting in Aklavik may have been the last time treaty was discussed, and Finnie appears to have reported back to Ottawa that the Inuvialuit had declined the invitation to sign Treaty 11. According to Rene Fumoleau, “at a session of the Northwest Territories Council in December 1929, the Commissioner of the Northwest Territories stated that Inuit should not be classed with Indians in government policies.”

Many things that took place over the next 40 years convinced Inuvialuit that seeking a land claim was in their best interests. But one of the messages we can learn from the earlier decision to refuse treaty is that despite the population reductions and dislocations resulting from foreign diseases that periodically spread through Inuvialuit communities, and being impacted by other forces of change during late 1800s and early 1900s, the strength and resiliency of Inuvialuit culture was in full display when Inuvialuit leaders chose reindeer over a treaty.

A group of Inuvialuit possibly at Nalruriaq (Whitefish Station), 1925.

This story and others like it are part of the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation’s IFA 101 Project, which is intended to help people learn about the history, content and application of the Inuvialuit Final Agreement.

Information sources:

“As Long As This Land Shall Last” (by Rene Fumoleau, 1973)“I, Nuligak” (by Bob Cockney, edited by Maurice Metayer, 1966)

“Yellow Beetle Oral History and Archaeology Project” (by Elisa Hart and Cathy Cockney, Inuvialuit Social Development Program, 1999)

Oswald Finnie records at Library and Archives Canada