The World in 2050_ Four Forces Shaping Civilization's Northern Future - Laurence C. Smith [110]
This continued for three decades. Then, in 2008, Greenlanders headed back to the polls. A new Greenland referendum was proposing even further divorce proceedings from Denmark. Its sweeping reforms would include taking over the police force, courts, and the coast guard. Greenland’s official language would be changed from Danish to Greenlandic. Revenues from future oil and gas development would be shared between the two countries, so that the Danish subsidies needed for Greenland’s survival could be phased out. Greenland would conduct its own foreign affairs with other countries. The referendum passed overwhelmingly and entered effect in 2009. This island—bursting with offshore gas along both flanks—is now on a political path to full and complete independence.465
The Unfair Geography of Aboriginal Power
The modern land claims agreements in North America, and Home Rule in Greenland, are big deals. Politically, they portend a fundamental shift of power from central to aboriginal governments. Economically, they portend abolishment of a culture of paternalism and welfare in favor of engaging aboriginal people in the modern global economy. These new commitments are here to stay. In Canada, for example, the new land claims agreements are even protected by a constitutional amendment.466 While not perfect, this devolutionary trend is a giant step forward relative to abuses of the past. It signals a profound return of autonomy and dignity to many northern aboriginal peoples.
Notice I said “northern.” Nearly all of this new control lies north of the sixtieth parallel. It is an assemblage of people living way up there—the Alaska Natives, Inuit, Yukon Indians, Dene Nation, Greenlanders, and others—who have most cause to celebrate.
Geography and luck greatly explain this uneven spatial pattern of new aboriginal clout. Many remote northern groups escaped being cajoled into old-fashioned treaties during the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries because their homelands were distant and undesired. Permafrost tundra and spruce bogs held little appeal to white homesteaders. While northern aboriginals were infected, harassed, and resettled, they were not forced to sign away their claims to the land. With no historic treaty signed, their ancestral claims to the land were never extinguished.467 Legally, this left them in a strong bargaining position by the time a more progressive interpretation of their legal and civil rights arrived in the 1970s.
Most importantly, their remote geography meant there was actually still something left to negotiate for. In North America, the perfect trifecta of fossil fuels, hydropower, and civil rights converged upon empty federal and Crown lands, controlled only by Washington and Ottawa. Until the new land claims agreements were instituted, virtually none of this land had ever been privatized. These new aboriginal corporations are thus the first and only major private land owners in northernmost North America.
The unfair geography of aboriginal power. Shaded areas indicate lands where aboriginal groups have total or partial control, either through reserves, deeded property, or joint management through modern land claims or home-rule agreements. Alaska boundaries delineate the jurisdictional borders of the twelve Regional Corporations established by ANCSA. Aboriginal control is greatest in the far north and Greenland; in southern Canada and the lower 48 U.S. states it is constrained to much smaller reserves and reservations set by historical treaties. (Map data assembled from multiple sources.468)
The situation is totally different in southern Canada and the lower forty-eight American states.