Beyond the protection of the land, national parks in the Canadian arctic: A way to actualized and institutionalized aboriginal cultures in the global

Abstract

The Canadian government has long excluded Aboriginals from the governance processes of protected areas. However, today Aboriginals peoples, thanks to several judgments of the Supreme Court of Canada have now access to legal tools enabling them to participate equality on park management councils. Despite these legal advances not all co-management models give the same space to Aboriginals people and to their knowledge. As a result management councils express different levels of satisfaction with co-management. Co-jurisdiction is the form of comanagement favoured by Aboriginals because it creates legal conditions for an egalitarian partnership based on recognition of their land rights and knowledge that they wish to pass on to future generations. This chapter examines the management plans of 13 national parks of Canada located in the Arctic. Our study reveals that Aboriginal people feel that culture is the essence of nature and that humans are therefore part of the ecosystem. The protection of nature is therefore part of the duty of men and women. That being said, the environmental protection requires the maintenance of hunting and fishing activities; as such a park must first be a place where Aboriginal culture is living and practiced and not a "pristine natural setting".