New book highlights how Inuvialuit transformed conservation in Canada

WHITEHORSE – Canada is known throughout the world as a leader in collaborative approaches to environmental conservation and wildlife management. The Canadian North, in particular, is recognized as a place where the federal government has worked closely with First Nations in the creation and management of protected areas. However, the story of how this situation developed is not well understood, either here or abroad.

When Brad Martin first learned the story of how a small group of Inuvialuit people with historic claims in the western Arctic wrestled concessions from the Canadian government over the creation of Ivvavik National Park in the northern Yukon, it led him north.

In a new book on the global spread of national park ideals Martin has now argued that this episode transformed how conservation was practiced in Canada.

Civilizing Nature: National Parks in Global Historical Perspective suggests that national parks have been one of the most important and successful institutions in global environmentalism. It features chapters on the creation of parks in Mexico, India Slovenia, Malaysia, Australia and Yukon, Canada.

Ivvavik National Park was created in 1984 as part of the Inuvialuit Final Agreement. It protects a portion of the calving grounds of the Porcupine caribou herd and represents the Northern Yukon and Mackenzie Delta natural regions. In recent decades, the management of the park has been closely tied to international debates over oil and gas development, aboriginal self-government, and environmental protection.

Ivvavik was the first national park in Canada created as part of a land claims agreement. The negotiated settlement gave the Inuvialuit authority over some aspects of park management and helped them protect their traditional hunting rights.

These were groundbreaking developments, given that rural residents, indigenous or not, had often simply been expelled from parks across the country in earlier times.

“We’ve become used to these ideas in 2013, but 30-40 years ago, they were uncommon,” said Martin, a PhD candidate at Northwestern University in Chicago and Chair of the School of Community Education and Development at Yukon College.

In his chapter, Martin highlights the importance of longstanding relationships between First Nations people in the Yukon and Northwest Territories and their counterparts in other parts of the circumpolar North, especially Alaska, in influencing local debates over conservation.

He states: “The Inuvialuit drew upon ideas, resources and relationships with indigenous peoples in other parts of the world to challenge Parks Canada’s thinking, and in doing so they fundamentally reshaped how conservation is practiced in this country.”

Martin’s chapter is entitled Global Values, Local Politics: Inuit Internationalism and the Establishment of Northern Yukon National Park. It is connected to a larger research project on the environmental history of northern Canada involving leading scholars from across the country, the United States, and the United Kingdom, the results of which will be published separately in 2014.

Civilizing Nature: National Parks in Global Historical Perspective is published by Berghann Books and available at www.berghahnbooks.com and www.amazon.ca.

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For more information, contact:

Michael Vernon
Communications Coordinator
College Relations
Yukon College
867.668.8786
867.332.4722
mvernon@yukoncollege.yk.ca

Jacqueline Bedard
Director
College Relations
Yukon College
867.456.8619
jbedard@yukoncollege.yk.ca