Inuit homeland close

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The creation of an Inuit homeland in the eastern Arctic is a step closer to reality after 54 per cent of voters approved a boundary to divide the Northwest Territories.

The east saw a record 73 per cent of voters turned out. They supported a boundary for a third Canadian territory to be called Nunavut, meaning "our land" in Inuktitut, by a nine-to-one margin.

Threats by Dene Indians to reject the boundary failed to materialize when only 47 per cent of eligible voters turned out. The majority "no" vote in the western Arctic, which has two-thirds of the territory's 27,000 eligible voters, carried little weight due to the low turnout.

The proposed deal involves about two million square kilometres of land, which is roughly one-fifth of Canada's land mass. A total of 22,000 people live there, with 17,500 of them Inuit. The boundaries stretch from the tree line at 60 degrees latitude to the North Pole, covering the entire Eastern Arctic.

Ottawa would pay $580 million over 14 years, a total of $1.15 billion with interest. This would give the Inuit title to 350,000 square km of land in exchange for surrender of Inuit claims to the land.

The Dene and Metis are angry the boundary cuts through what they say are their traditional lands.

"A lot of people are saying there's no turning back now," MLA and cabinet member Dennis Patterson said from victory celebrations in his riding of Iqaluit, the likely capital of Nunavut.

Business leaders and politicians in the west have argued their region would lose government jobs and that creating a second bureaucracy would be expensive and inefficient.

The Inuit still have to ratify a land-claim settlement in November before Ottawa

can proceed with creation of Nunavut by 1999.