World Notes Canada

They call themselves Inuit -- "the people" -- and they eke out simple lives in tiny communities scattered across the frozen tundra of the Northwest Territories. Last week, after 15 years of negotiations with Ottawa, an agreement was announced under which the Inuit will take political control of one-fifth of Canada's land area.

The accord, the largest native land-claim settlement ever, will carve a new territory to be called Nunavut (Our Land) out of the 770,000 sq. mi. that makes up the eastern two-thirds of the Northwest Territories, where 17,500 Inuit live. The Inuit will gain mineral rights on 14,000 sq. mi. but will give up other subsurface claims in exchange for $1 billion.

Louis Pilakapsi, head of the Tungavik Federation of Nunavut, predicted that the pact "will result in a better social and economic state for the Inuit people," But it must still pass muster in the federal Parliament and plebiscites in both the Northwest Territories and the future Nunavut. Dene Indians in the western third of the Territories charge that the settlement undermines their demand for total self-government and control of oil and mineral wealth in their region.