History Laid Bare: Early Days of the IFA and Cope

Eight influential elders gathered together this winter to talk about the development of the Inuvialuit Final Agreement (IFA) and the Committee for the Original People’s Entitlement (COPE).

Beyond the details of the deal, the discussions covered all aspects of each person’s upbringing and experience during that time. In more than 14 hours of raw videotape, they speak from the heart about a defining period in Inuvialuit history.

Printed in the following pages is a selection of some of the most impactful words shared during the meeting. In no way can this encompass the breadth of knowledge exposed, but it can serve as a window into a different time.

Quotes have been edited and condensed for clarity. Additional commentary has been added to provide context to some of the statements.

Peter Green

“I’m one of about 18 siblings in my family. My late parents lived the life of an Inuvialuk all throughout their lives. I’m the newcomer.

When I left residential school in 1959, I went home for the first time in about seven years that I spent there. In those years I was subjected to the removal of my Inuvialuktun language. Now isn’t that something? And today I have the hardest time to try to speak it.

I’ve done it when I was at the age of seven years old. I spoke to Mom and Dad and my siblings in my language, and because of the residential school experience, that’s been wiped out. I couldn’t speak it and I have a tough time today trying to speak it to everyone.

That kind of brainwashing that I received – that my language was of the devil. Isn’t that something? That’s crazy, and I’m just a little kid for goodness’ sake. With that kind of a background, I had a tough time throughout my life because I was termed as a nothing, as a nobody, less than the French people that were there teaching.

They’re supposed to be my guardians, and look at what happened: nothing but misery throughout my life because they took away who I was and who I’m supposed to be. With that kind of treatment, it damaged me. It caused me misery and lots of it, all kinds.

I’ve had a life that was distant from who I’m supposed to be. My mom and dad, they spoke the language and lived the life of the Inuvialuit. I had no part in that. And when it did come, I was an old person, so I missed out on a lot of things that I should have been taught.

That chapter in my life I’d like to see behind me and that’s the way it’s going to stay. I have taken steps throughout my life to counter all the negatives that I have experienced and replace them with positive things.

I had to speak for myself and manage to convince people that it’s true, I’m missing some social development parts of my life. I invested heavily on that and today I’m a better person for that. I’m also thankful that I took the steps that I did take to get out there and seek out the kind of stuff that was missing in my social development and personal upbringing.

I had mixed messages when I was in the residential school that I’m still grappling with today. Why? That’s crazy. It’s the kind of stuff I was subjected to and say I’m no good. I had to conquer all that and replace those with good values.”

A discussion about the education system brought out raw emotion.

“Not one word about who Mangilaluk was, what kind of leader he was. The Inuvialuit people were never mentioned. But here we are in school learning about some foreign king or queen that never came to our land.

As a kid, they said fly the Union Jack up there on top of our school building. I had to go and hoist it up for goodness’ sake. I didn’t understand what that was all about. But that’s government for us. They impose things. What do I know about the Union Jack? Nothing. All I know is it’s a piece of cloth and oh yeah, hang it. But we were told that we are part of Canada, and that’s the flag that Canada has.

Today I want to contrast with the flag that you have as Inuvialuit. See that, we’ve come a long ways in terms of being governed by people that don’t even live in the country.

All those kind of things were done without our involvement, our knowledge, and they bypassed people. They’d gone ahead and made laws. 1921 is a good example. These laws impacted the people. There were game laws where you couldn’t even shoot a swan but people were taking it anyway because it’s a question of survival.

It’s those kind of things that the government, our own government, was imposing on us that didn’t make sense anyway. My own people were deprived of getting the muskox even to eat, to survive. Those are the kind of stuff that my parents and my grandparents had to live through.

You talk about what kind of impact there was. Well you’re hearing it. You couldn’t take certain kinds of food to live. It was against the law. What law? Laws that were made 500 miles away from here. They look good on paper and all that stuff and then they had the policemen controlling the country, the Arctic, making sure the laws were respected, but the laws were made by someone else, somewhere else for their own purpose.

They didn’t respect the people that were living in the country on the land. It made it harder. People had to hide to get food to eat. Every time somebody says, oh what was the impact? You’re hearing it now.”

Robert Kuptana

“I was born in an igloo. I took on the two worlds. I was born to William and Sarah Kuptana, and unfortunately both of them got TB (tuberculosis) and they had major operations, so I had to look after them at a very young age. That’s a reason why I never went to school.

When my parents were able to start looking after themselves, I started doing hunting and trapping. Because I had to look after them at nine years old, I had to learn to shoot a caribou. When I did that and my dad gave me a .22, that rifle was so old that when I’d shoot, it shot only once in a while, maybe one out of every five shots.”

Robert talked about learning English from Archie comics and labels before he started to read the Bible.

“With the negotiators, we also decided to include our Inuvialuit traditional knowledge in terms of the land, wildlife, environment and everything else that we used for survival. They don’t like it but they don’t know about traditional knowledge. We are very professional in that way. We have to be very proud of the people who are highly educated who were our negotiators.”

“When we teach our way of life, that we are equal participants of Canada, of Canadian people, there’s nothing stopping us. There’s no reason why we cannot do that.”

Randall “Boogie” Pokiak

“Before they tried to assimilate me into the white culture, I was already assimilated into Inuvialuit culture, Inuvialuit history, Inuvialuit traditions, legends, even customs. The elders that stayed with the women while the men went hunting, (I) would listen to them, they’d tell stories. That was my start in life as an Inuvialuk and nothing has changed for me.

The land and the wildlife made us who we are today. Without it, I wouldn’t be here. Without the land and the wildlife, I’d starve eating beef and chicken, because it don’t fill you. The land was very important and I learned in the early age about a lot of historical aspects of our people because I come from the coast. Our people have been in here for thousands and thousands of years. We have a lot of history. We had our own governance.”

Boogie shared some advice he received at the time from his elders.

“Follow their footsteps, learn from them, follow them and then after a while you’re going to be walking beside them, and then later on you’re going to be leading them. I think this is what the claim is — we followed in their footsteps, learned about them, got educated about how they behaved, what their interests are, and then we walked beside them during negotiations and dealing with all this.

The government people look at us (like), ‘I don’t think you guys are ready for anything, you don’t know nothing about government, you don’t know nothing about oil company, you don’t know nothing about the white man way of life.’ But you know what, we stuck to our guns, we kept talking about what we knew, the land and the wildlife.”

“The backbone of the IFA are the harvesters, elders who are retired but they had a long life of experience. These are deep thinkers. It’s not just like you go out there and trap and hunt and do these things seasonally. There are issues that are pressing on you because you’re being impacted by legislation, wildlife acts, and it’s just like as a harvester, each year goes by, five years go by, and just like they put a straitjacket on you.

Every year that passed by right until the final agreement, that straitjacket’s straps were pretty tight.

That’s my perspective on what we actually went through emotionally. The government was putting those straps on. And we had a chance here to take a lot of those straps off.”

“I always imagined us playing king of the hill. We’re at the bottom of the hill and these guys are up there and every time we climb up, they push us back down. But every time we climb up, we learn a little bit more before we get pushed down, so they had a little harder time to push us down. Pretty soon with the IFA, we’re at the same playing level as the federal government and any government. We came to that place.”

“When you’re a harvester, you’re active, active, active and you’ve got your own mind and you’re deep thinkers. When you become an elder and you’re not trapping and moving around and being active, still your mind is going. They know they’re going to die but they always say okay, well we brought our people this far, let’s talk to these active people and say you can bring your Inuvialuit way of life a lot further. That’s my mental attitude of getting involved. I know what they wanted to do. We were just young people like an arrow. They had the bow, the elders. We were the arrows.”

Nellie Cournoyea

“The common theme through everything was a concern that we would lose the ability to make decisions for ourselves. Prior to Aklavik being moved, there was very little social assistance, very little government involvement in our lives.”

Nellie talked about the condescending attitude government officials had toward Inuvialuit, saying they didn’t have qualifications or certificates. She referenced an alleged comment from then-Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development Jean Chretien that the houses in Sachs Harbour weren’t worth living in.

“Those people built those houses themselves. Government didn’t help them. They made their own life. That was a real insult.”

Renie Arey

Gilbert Thrasher

“You grew up very quickly. We had no houses at that time. We had tents that were covered in caribou skin for insulation, and later in the winter that would be covered right over (with snow). As it got thicker, you could hear your dog team passing over your tent. In those days, you had to learn very quickly to hunt, trap and to survive. I have the blessing of good uncles that educated me that way.

We were brought up very strongly to believe and respect your elders. That’s something that has been in my heart and still is today. I started working with COPE in the early days and I got to spend a lot of time working with Nellie at times in the Paulatuk area.

I have always felt blessed that we had the right people at the right place at the right time that started the negotiating days and the COPE days. I also felt very blessed that we had a great number of elders that shared their time in shaping the land selection and the big support that we had received from them in every community.

They were, in my young days, a very strong group of people. During our land claim days, it never changed. They were still a very strong group of people. And today we are that group, that age, and I’m very happy to have been asked to be part of this group.”