Hilu Tagoona was six years old when her mother brought her on a caribou hunt along Baker Lake, just south of their community of the same name. They walked up a hill together and spotted a caribou resting on the ground. Her mother instructed Tagoona to crouch down and they crept around the animal to get upwind. They could tell the caribou noticed their presence, but it didn’t move. Just curious. Tagoona’s mother quietly told her to cover her ears. Then she shot the caribou with her rifle. 

Tagoona started to cry, and her mother told her she shouldn’t mourn this as a loss, but rather see it as a gift. We need the caribou to survive, she said, and we’ve had a respectful relationship for thousands of years. 

“It’s always stayed with me that we must respect them and make sure that we care for them, so that we can continue to have this gift of being able to sustain ourselves and have food sovereignty,” Tagoona says. 

Since Baker Lake is Nunavut’s only inland community, the Beverly and Qamanirjuaq caribou herds that pass through the area are especially important to residents — there are no marine mammals to rely on. 

Just as Tagoona learned this at a young age, she learned of the mineral potential near her community and the desire to mine it. Her mother has been outspoken about the need to protect caribou habitat and Tagoona followed her lead. She’s a MiningWatch Canada board member, and a member of the non-profit Nunavummiut Makitagunarningit, which has advocated against uranium mining near Baker Lake.

“I think a lot of Nunavut has been safe from many things due to the remoteness, the extreme temperatures and that has created a safe haven for a wonderful ecosystem including caribou, which is very much a northern species and very much a symbol of Canada,” she says. “We feel a big responsibility to protect those areas.”

Today, the Amaruq gold mine operates 125 kilometres north of Baker Lake, part of Agnico Eagle’s Meadowbank Complex. Three more mines — extracting gold and iron ore — are in operation in other parts of the territory. According to a November 2020 overview, there are nearly 2,500 mineral claims in Nunavut, about 500 leases and 130 prospecting permits, targeting copper, diamonds, gold and iron ore.  

Tagoona’s focus now is the Nunavut land use plan, which will create a framework for the future of the territory, determining which types of development can happen and where, and outlining where environmental protection is a priority above all. Across Canada, land use plans tend to be developed on a regional basis, rather than province or territory-wide — making Nunavut’s all the more sprawling.

The document has been years in the making, with the latest — and potentially final — draft released last summer. It’s a massive undertaking, and not only because Nunavut comprises one-fifth of Canada’s land mass. 

The region is where many competing issues overlap — where Inuit value culture, tradition and the health of the landscape and its wildlife. Where unemployment is high and the ground holds mineral and oil and gas deposits. Where barren-ground caribou populations are declining dramatically and climate change is being felt most acutely, causing sea ice to disappear and affecting humans and wildlife alike. Where fewer than 40,000 Nunavummiut live in 25 communities, only accessible by air or sea.

“The geographic coverage and the range of issues addressed is without precedent, not just within Canada but internationally,” the Nunavut Planning Commission wrote in a 2021 backgrounder on the land use plan. Canada is also one of the few countries that still has large, relatively intact landscapes.

“I would say there’s a large responsibility not just to Nunavut, to Canada, but to the whole planet to get this right and to support these Indigenous-led efforts,” says Paul Crowley, a lawyer and consultant in Iqaluit who’s involved with Friends of Land Use Planning, a group that supports Indigenous-led land use planning in Canada. “If this comes to pass, it will be, I’m told, the largest regional land use plan in the world.”

Back in 1993, the Canadian and Northwest Territories governments and what was then called the Tungavik Federation of Nunavut — representing Inuit of the Canadian eastern Arctic — signed the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement. Now simply referred to as the Nunavut Agreement, it’s the largest land claim in the country, covering 2.1 million square kilometres that fell within the borders of the Northwest Territories at the time. It gave Inuit a role in co-managing the environment, harvesting rights, a portion of government revenues from resource development and federal money transfers in order to establish a territorial government. 

In 1999, Nunavut was officially created, separate from the Northwest Territories. By 2025, Nunavut’s devolution is expected to take place, with the federal government handing responsibility over land, water and resources to the territory. 

The Nunavut Agreement established institutions to oversee resource development and any impacts on the land and water, including the Nunavut Planning Commission, which operates independently of government but receives federal funding. Under the agreement, a land use plan for the territory is a legal requirement.

Paul Quassa was sitting next to then-prime minister Brian Mulroney back in ’93 when they both signed the Nunavut Agreement. Quassa was chief Inuit negotiator and president of Tungavik Federation of Nunavut, which now goes by Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. and operates independently of the territorial government; he went on to chair the Nunavut Planning Commission from 2006 to 2013. Now he is a senior advisor for Baffinland Iron Mines Corp., which operates the Mary River mine on north Baffin Island. The ultimate goal of the land use plan, he says, is to protect the environment and wildlife, while allowing for economic development. 

“The Nunavut Planning Commission’s role is to ensure that they listen to all,” Quassa says. “It’s also very clear in the Nunavut land claims agreement that special consideration has to be [given to] Inuit, Inuit culture, and I think that’s a very important provision in there.”

The road to a land use plan for Nunavut has seen its share of bumps. Regional land use plans were already well underway in 2005, when the federal government said they’d no longer be considered. Once work on the territory-wide plan began in 2007, public hearings and meetings across Nunavut followed, which then came to another halt when former prime minister Stephen Harper’s federal government refused to fund the final round of hearings. In 2014, the commission sued the Harper government for interfering with its process but dropped the lawsuit the following year in hopes of coming to an agreement.

The federal government has provided an average of $5.5 million per year for the planning process, including the cost of holding community hearings, plus an additional $10.9 million between 2016 and 2021 under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government. There’s been hundreds of filed written comments and four draft plans in all.

Once the three signatories — the federal and Nunavut governments and Nunavut Tunngavik — approve the plan, it becomes legally binding. It’s a living document, though, not intended to be set in stone. It will be reviewed regularly by the commission.

This latest draft sets out three main land designations: limited use, conditional use and mixed use. Limited use makes up 22 per cent of land; there are year-round prohibitions “on one or more types of land use.” Conditional use areas make up nine per cent, and have requirements, like seasonal prohibitions on certain activities. Mixed use comprises 65 per cent, with no prohibited uses or conformity requirements. Aside from specific projects that would be grandfathered into limited-use areas, mining and other industrial development is only permitted in conditional use and mixed use areas.

The plan designates caribou calving and post-calving grounds, key access corridors and some freshwater crossings as limited use. 

Caribou in Nunavut are in trouble. Most of the territory’s herds have seen steep declines in recent years. The Bathurst and Baffin herds, for instance, have each decreased by 98 per cent over the last 30 years. In some communities, Inuit are shouldering hunting restrictions.

At previous community consultations, an overwhelming majority of attendees said they wanted these areas off-limits to industrial activity year-round to minimize disruption to caribou. 

“If you travel to communities, which I’ve done extensively, you hear that this plan is reflective of what people want to see,” says Brandon Laforest, senior specialist of Arctic species and ecosystems at World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Canada. “So I land in a place that this is a good plan.”

Not everyone thinks so. Some parties have taken issue with the amount of land designated as limited use — up from 15 per cent in the 2016 draft, due to a push from communities. 

“The increase in prohibitions is an unacceptable risk to Nunavut’s economic opportunities,” wrote the Nunavut government in its October submission to the planning commission. 

Agnico Eagle, who extracted nearly 530,000 ounces of gold from its two Nunavut mines in 2020 and acquired a third mine in 2021, suggested that the assumption that protecting caribou habitat “will support continued levels of abundance and aid in the recovery of declined herds” was “erroneous.”

“There is a view (which we believe is unsupported) in the 2021 [land use plan] that development is detrimental to migratory caribou abundance to the exclusion of other factors,” the mining company wrote in its submission to the planning commission. “This view is derived from southern Canadian experiences and evidence associated with non-migratory Boreal caribou.”

Instead of broad geographic-based prohibitions, the mine’s submission posited that mitigation measures that “travel with the caribou” and kick in once they’re present would be enough, such as closing the road to the mine when caribou approach it or suspending outdoor operations like drilling, blasting and use of helicopters when more than 50 caribou are within five kilometres of the mine site. Agnico Eagle declined an interview request for this story.

Laforest disagrees. 

“I would flip that and say if you don’t protect the calving grounds, then you’re almost guaranteeing they’re not going to come back,” he says. “It is an industry tactic to undermine the importance of habitat protection.”

Laforest points to the fragmentation of boreal caribou habitat — and the decimated populations — in the provinces. “Every approach to caribou conservation is anchored in habitat protection for critical areas,” he says. “From a barren-ground caribou perspective, this is a chance to get it right and a chance to avoid the problems we’ve seen in the south.”

He adds that mobile protections are unproven and unfeasible, given the amount of monitoring that would be required. The measures could be tested along migration routes, he says, but they just aren’t appropriate in critical calving areas.

Ross Thompson, executive director of the Beverly and Qamanirjuaq Caribou Management Board, adds that no one’s saying industrial activity is solely responsible for herd decline — the problem is cumulative effects.

“The herds are being assailed from everywhere, all points of the compass,” he says, listing industrial disturbance, harvesting, predation and climate change as a few examples. “If the habitat is not healthy and vigorous and extensive, then that will impact the ability for a population to rebound.” 

Another subject of disagreement has been what to do with existing mineral rights in critical caribou habitat. The latest draft plan grandfathers in certain rights in limited-use areas, ​​though if these projects seek to expand or modify operations, they must be reviewed by the commission to ensure that the changes are in keeping with the plan. 

Both the federal government — which holds most of the territory’s subsurface rights and thus receives mine royalties — and the NWT & Nunavut Chamber of Mines have recommended the plan recognize all existing mineral rights. Yet many people remain concerned about any industrial activity in areas designated limited use.

“Our argument is why not protect those areas altogether, because even if exploration is occurring during those times [when caribou aren’t present], exploration is only in hopes to find development opportunities,” says Hilu Tagoona in Baker Lake. To her, and others, economic development and habitat protection can co-exist — but caribou are the top priority.

“There’s two million square kilometres of land,” says Paul Okalik, a former Nunavut premier who also helped negotiate the Nunavut Agreement and is now Arctic specialist at WWF-Canada. “There’s plenty of land for everybody. Just those areas where we feel the caribou should be protected are what we’re focusing on.”

This is why having a finalized plan should benefit everyone. For industry, it will provide clarity around which areas are open for development and which are not — a road map to avoid conflict with communities. It is, after all, a land use plan, not solely a conservation plan.

A signed plan could also be an opportunity for Nunavut to contribute even more to Canada’s international commitment to protect 30 per cent of its land and water by 2030 — on the territory’s terms. Already, Tallurutiup Imanga and Tuvaijuittuq, two marine protected areas, make up more than half of the 14 per cent of Canada’s oceans that have some form of protection. In 2020, then-Nunavut premier Joe Savikataaq said his government wouldn’t support any more federally protected areas in the territory until a devolution agreement is reached. He accused Canada of using the territory to meet federal conservation goals while undermining Nunavut’s ability to make decisions about its own lands and resources.

Based on the criteria that outlines what areas qualify under Canada’s conservation target, it seems that some of Nunavut’s limited-use areas — which total 440,000 square kilometres (altogether a little less than the area of Baffin Island) — would count towards the federal target.

At the end of 2020, Canada had protected 12.5 per cent of its land and freshwater — about 1.1 million square kilometres (or nearly the equivalent of the entire province of Ontario). The country still has a long way to go to meet its conservation targets and the potential addition of Nunavut’s limited-use areas would nudge that number up to about 17 per cent. But it’s not clear that the entirety of these areas would qualify. For one thing, the land use plan will be amendable, which suggests that its protections would be as well, and a key part of the conservation criteria is longevity.   

Residents of Taloyoak have a vision. They want to create an Inuit Protected and Conserved Area around their community on the edge of the Boothia Peninsula. Called Aviqtuuq, the area is home to caribou, muskox, bowhead whales, seals, narwhals and migratory birds. 

In addition to protecting the wildlife that use the area, the Spence Bay Hunters and Trappers Association wants to explore sustainable, Inuit-led activities like small-scale fisheries, outfitting camps and tourism. Over the years, the association has made it clear to the planning commission that Aviqtuuq should be off-limits to industrial development — the latest draft designates it limited use. 

“We’re happy with the new plan,” says Jimmy Oleekatalik, the association’s manager. “The Elders in the past always wanted [that area] protected.”

But in February 2021, Laforest, who’s been working with the association to advocate for Aviqtuuq’s protection, learned the federal government had issued two new mineral claims there that month. He says people in Taloyoak were upset, but since the plan is still in draft form, the land is technically open. WWF-Canada has called for Ottawa to stop issuing claims in areas set for protection, Laforest says, but to no avail. 

As it stands, it seems these two claims won’t be grandfathered into the land use plan — they’re not listed in the draft’s appendix of exempted projects. But Laforest is concerned about a statement in the draft that the commission may amend the appendix from time to time, “as it is expected that proponents will refine the areas in which they expect to undertake mining activities and abandon rights to other areas … ”

In an email, Jonathan Savoy, the commission’s director of policy and planning, wrote that commissioners — eight community members appointed by the federal and territorial governments, Nunavut Tunngavik and the three regional Inuit associations — would decide whether to revise the appendix to include additional mineral rights after the next round of community hearings, scheduled for March 2022. 

Next year will be the 15th in the planning process. There’s a sense of urgency among people on the ground in Nunavut, a feeling that, until the plan is approved, it’s open season for mining companies and the future of the caribou is even more tenuous. Okalik, for one, is frustrated there’s no plan yet in place.

“I would have thought that we would’ve had this plan 25 years ago,” he says. “This is a treaty that should be honoured by all parties and it should be implemented already.” 

He doesn’t want to speculate about whether that will happen in 2022.

“We’ve waited 30 years — I don’t want to put forward expectations because I don’t know how much time we’ll wait. So I’ll just wait for the day and have a celebration when it takes place.”

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On a sunny winter day in the southern Yukon, Fish Lake is a magnet for recreationalists. Tiny fishing huts dot the ice. Snowmobiles roar in the distance. Fat bikers follow a packed path through the snow, while barking dogs race along the lakeshore. A line of cars and trucks winds down from the popular hiking trail up into the alpine.

Nighttime brings bonfires, people hoping to see the Northern Lights and, occasionally, fireworks.

What’s left from all this activity is, often, piles of human and dog poop, plastic bags, beer cans, diapers, McDonald’s cups, used pads and tampons and nails from wooden pallets that partiers bring to burn, according to one tourism operator who works and lives in the area.

From Whitehorse, Fish Lake — Łu Zil Män in Southern Tutchone — is about a 20-minute drive along a paved road that turns to dirt once you leave city limits. A couple of signs en route advise motorists that the wilderness bordering the road belongs to the Kwanlin Dün First Nation. As you turn the last bend, the view opens up: the lake — blinding white in the winter and deep, dark blue in the summer — surrounded by mountains.

For years, Kwanlin Dün citizens have been concerned about the increasing use of Fish Lake. Whitehorse’s population is growing — in 2020, it was up 23.5 per cent from 10 years ago — and the area is easily accessible, with a road that’s plowed through the winter.

That’s why the First Nation and the Yukon government have begun working on a land-use plan that will guide the future of Fish Lake, in part by designating different uses for the area, such as residential, commercial, traditional or environmental protection.

“We know that if we don’t act now, the problems out there will only get worse,” says Kwanlin Dün Chief Doris Bill. “So we need to figure out a way to coexist.”

Fish Lake is a critically important area to Kwanlin Dün. It was part of the First Nation’s seasonal travels to food sources in what is today the Whitehorse area. Families had camps there; many would arrive in the summer and stay through the winter. Trout spawned in September, followed by whitefish — Łu Zil Män means “whitefish lake”— in October and November.

After the fish runs, hunters headed into the mountains around the lake for sheep, moose and caribou. In the spring, people trapped beaver and muskrat, and grayling spawned in Bonneville Lakes, in the alpine alongside Fish Lake.

An archaeology project at the lake in 1993 uncovered stone knives, spear points and scrapers, as well as thousands of chips and flakes — the byproduct of making stone tools. According to Uncovering the Past, a book published by Kwanlin Dün in 1994, these findings showed that people have been using the site for more than 5,000 years. 

An old Tagish story describes two giant fish — a male and a female — that live in Fish Lake and keep it stocked. On warm summer days, the story goes, you can still sometimes spot the two huge creatures moving through the water. In Tlingit, it was called Dis Hini, or Moon Lake, because some believed the lake was run by the moon and would set their nets according to its phases.

“The Fish Lake area is very special to our people,” Bill says. “I have family that lives in the area. We use the area to carry out traditional activities, such as hunting, fishing, berry-picking, medicine-picking. It’s an area that is well-used by our citizens.”

The area’s importance is reflected in Kwanlin Dün’s final agreement, a modern treaty the First Nation signed with the federal and territorial governments in 2005. The document designates Kwanlin Dün’s settlement lands — land it owns and manages. About 80 square kilometres in the Fish Lake area fall into this category.

The First Nation’s self-government agreement, also signed in 2005, outlines the development of local area plans — the process now underway at Fish Lake.

Local area plans are written by the Yukon and First Nations governments for unincorporated communities all over the territory, with the goal of identifying residents’ vision, minimizing land-use conflict and providing a framework for future development.

In January, the planning process began for Fish Lake. Over the next two years, a steering committee made up of three government and three Kwanlin Dün appointees will produce the plan. Both parties have signed a memorandum of understanding, which, among other things, commits them to incorporating both Indigenous and Western knowledge.

Once the plan is written, the committee will present it to the two governments for approval. (Ta’an Kwäch’än Council, another First Nation, will be involved too, since some of its traditional territory is within the 460-square-kilometre planning area.)

Fish Lake is unique from other places in the Yukon that already have local area plans. For one, there aren’t many residential lots — it’s a largely undeveloped area.

This is also the first local area plan to be produced under Kwanlin Dün’s new Lands Act, Nan kay sháwthän Däk’anúta ch’e (“We look after our land” in Southern Tutchone). With this legislation, the First Nation is able to create and enforce laws on its settlement lands. The act also formalizes specific regulatory tools so the First Nation can allocate land to citizens and beneficiaries, and lease it to the general public.

“Our people are now going to be getting out onto the land,” Bill says. “They’re going to be building houses, they’re going to be building hunting camps, they’re going to be building cabins.”

The plan has been years in the works. In 2008, after the Yukon government saw an increase in applications for rural residential lots in the Fish Lake area, a study recommended that a plan be in place before any more lots were added.

The First Nation also commissioned a study last year to learn more about commercial use of Fish Lake.

Sky High Wilderness Ranch, which operates dog-sled tours in the winter and horseback rides in the summer, is the largest business based in the area, just a short walk north of the lake. But many other commercial tour operators, from aurora viewing to snowmobiles to dog sleds, also use the area.

“We have evidence to suggest that over the last 20 years, commercial users in the area have increased from 500 people a year to 5,000 people a year,” says Roy Neilson, Kwanlin Dün’s acting manager of planning. “And that doesn’t even account for the private recreational use of the area … Some anecdotal evidence suggests that in the summer, hiking in the area over the last 10 years has at least doubled.”

Jocelyne LeBlanc, a co-owner of Sky High, has seen the byproducts of this. When she moved to the ranch 10 years ago, she’d walk down to the lake on Monday mornings and pick up trash from weekend visitors. Now, she says, that’s a daily job.

“It’s pretty disappointing,” she says. “Fish Lake is a beautiful area … it’s more than a party zone.”

Several cabins owned by Kwanlin Dün citizens, some of them dating back many years, sit along the lake. Bill says these structures have also been damaged or disturbed by visitors.

The First Nation has taken measures to educate the public about its traditional use of the land. Since 2018, Kwanlin Dün has asked hikers and berry-pickers to stay off the popular trail between 5 p.m. and 10 a.m., when its citizens hunt in the area. That year, the First Nation’s lands operations manager told the Yukon News that some hikers had called conservation officers to report gunshots, seemingly unaware that citizens are allowed to hunt there.

Now, a sign at the trailhead informs visitors that they’re on settlement land and people hunt in the area in the fall.

Another concern is that growing traffic in the alpine around Bonneville Lakes might affect the caribou herd that winters there. A second sign at the trailhead offers information about snowmobiling in caribou habitat.

Kwanlin Dün also has land stewards that patrol its traditional territory, picking up garbage, conducting wildlife surveys and educating people in the backcountry.

“I don’t think that we’re going to prevent anybody from using the area,” says Bill. “If they do, we’re just asking them that they follow the rules and to help us keep it in a good condition for future generations … We’ve used it for millennia and I’m hoping that we can continue to use the land far into the future.”

According to a backgrounder written by both governments, the plan will help by addressing how to promote First Nations culture and history, how to manage tourism and recreation and what kinds of commercial use are appropriate.

Both Bill and Neilson emphasize that the process is collaborative.

“It’s not a zero-sum negotiation,” Neilson says. “Sometimes people can get concerned that their rights are being restricted or will be limited, which is not the intention.”

While the First Nation has the authority to impose laws — for instance, banning hikers during autumn evenings rather than asking politely — Bill says that’s not being considered at this point.

“I’m hoping that heightened awareness will result in people taking better care of the land and appreciating what we have,” she says.

And as more Kwanlin Dün citizens receive land allocations and begin building cabins or camps in the area, Bill says she hopes awareness and respect extend to their increased presence too.

“They have every right to be there … We want to assure people that we want to take care of the land, we respect it and we want to be good neighbours.”

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