On the night of December 7, 1989, a meeting was held on Parliament Hill between Inuit leaders, the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development and the GNWT to conclude the final questions related to the Nunavut AIP land claim. In preparation for the meeting, the Minister had written to the territory government asking for assistance in defining a process and timetable for a decision on Nunavut. At the meeting, GNWT and TFN agreed to develop, within six months of the IPA, a procedure for creating Nunavut outside the foe-la claim agreement, in accordance with the 1987 Iqaluit Agreement, including the requirement for a territorial-scale referendum at the border. The commitment was set out in section 4 of the fundamental law AIP, confirming the principled support of the three parties for the rapid creation of Nunavut. Article 4 reached agreement on the remaining legal issues. However, self-preservation dictated that the federal claims team remained highly agnostic in the creation of Nunavut. If we proposed that the claim could not be resolved without Nunavut, or if we invited a dialogue on how the claim package might be different with Nunavut, we risked being put on hold until the end of the political development process. Our only option was to keep our heads down and keep Dener with the land agreement in the hope that it could be approved without Nunavut, or that it would ultimately trigger a decision on Nunavut. The LNCA, negotiated between 1980 and 1993, consists of more than 40 chapters dealing with wildlife and harvesting rights, water and environmental management systems, parks and protected areas, cultural heritage resources, employment and public procurement, as well as a number of other issues. The agreement ceded ownership of 350,000 square kilometres of land to the Inuit, including mineral rights over 36,000 square kilometres.
It provided for capital transfers to Inuit of $1.14 billion and a current share of royalties from resource development within the residential area. Section 4 of the NLCA required Canada to introduce legislation on the creation of Nunavut. In 1982, negotiations slowed down markedly. The Inuit undertook an internal reorganization and entrusted the negotiations of the ITC, the national Inuit organization, to the Tungavuk Federation of Nunavut (TFN), a regional organization specially created to represent Inuit in Nunavut. On the federal side, Tom Molloy has been appointed as the new chief negotiator of the Confederation. The cloud of the unresolved agreement on wild animals hovering over the parties, it took a long time to restore trusting and productive working relationships at the negotiating table. Nunavut`s claim was signed on April 30, 1990 in Iglulik. For the first time, the Nunavut claim agreement and Nunavut gained a significant political profile in the federal system, with Minister Thomas Siddon and Inuit leaders forging a working relationship to advance the agenda. With the federal mandate, negotiations have been initiated more intensively and more concentrated. In the fall of 1989, negotiations were limited to a limited list of topics that would be resolved by a meeting between Inuit leaders, the Indian Minister of Northern Affairs and Development and the GNWT. The two main outstanding issues were the financial side of the basic debt agreement and Nunavut. In December 1991, the final land claim agreement was finalized until another decisive meeting was held between India`s Minister of Northern Affairs and Development, Inuit leaders and GNWT for a final meeting.
Again, the central theme of the meeting was Nunavut. At a night meeting on Parliament Hill in mid-December, negotiations on outstanding issues related to Nunavut`s land application were concluded, including agreement on a new Article 4 on political development. A limit was essential both for the foe claim contract and for the political development process.