Hillary Predko
This piece, Relationship to the Land (Use Planning Provisions) interrogates how the land in question in the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement is largely viewed as a map of resources to be extracted by settler Canadian society, while for Inuit it is home. The pink area, embroidered with french knots, are Inuit owned lands with surface rights, and the red are Inuit owned lands with subsurface rights. I want this piece to speak to the processes that led to the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement, and question the values that led to this map being an output of that agreement. These lands were annexed by the Canadian government in pursuit of the mineral and resource potential, and while Inuit have regained many rights to the land through these Land Claims Agreements, Inuit Nunangat is still seeing increased exploration and extraction of natural resources. Inuit have been forced to negotiate for their rights in a context where minerals and resources are always a key issue. The Arctic has been called barren by many settlers, but I know to Inuit it is abundant. The french knots of my embroidery started looking like a tundra populated with cloud berries. To one group, the land is a flat plane to be divided and extracted; to another, the land is the world, it is nourishment, it is home.
