SELECTED THESES ON THE CIRCUMPOLAR ARCTIC

The similar social structures of the Eskimos, or Inuit, of the circumpolar region comprised small politically autonomous units prior to their erosion by European colonial practices. Sovereign jurisdiction was extended over the Inuit territories as the initial colonial practices of Denmark and Britain, later Canada. This study seeks to explain the nature of the colonial processes that shaped the present different Eskimo administrations in Greenland, and in the Northwest Territories of Canada. It does so by employing two main variables; the type of indigenous political system and four phases of western conquest.
The first phase, designated the 'foreign policy phase', commenced with the arrival of European whalers and explorers who bartered with the Eskimos and increased their desire for western manufactures. Although foreign activity began in the Northwest Territories over a hundred years after it ended in Greenland, the social effect was similar in the absence of western administrations regulating trade practices.
A second period of conquest in Greenland emerged when the missionary Hans Egede, actively bound trading with Christianity. This was the 'frontier phase' of the Danish conquest of Greenland and is marked by competition and warfare with other European states attempting to gain control of Greenland's products. There was no frontier phase of conquest in the NWT as there was no contest for the Inuit territory.
Both Greenland and the Northwest Territories experienced the designated third wave of conquest, 'the paternal phase', which coincided with the expansion of administrative boundaries to include the indigenous people. The paternal administration of Greenland lasted for a long period and retained a mercantile stamp of rationality until the immediate post WWII era. In contrast, the similar period of Canada, of much shorter duration, was marked by free trade and an ad hoc administration. Canadian interest in her Arctic territory was primarily concerned with meeting foreign challenges to her sovereignty while the administration of the people fell to a triumvirate of traders, police and missionaries representing no one class or country.
The fourth and final epoch of Inuit integration, 'the industrial integration phase', occurred following WWII. The new western alliances required a reorganisation of colonial relationships to provide the infrastructure necessary to industrialisation and an administration to direct the attendant social and political adjustments. Field studies of local administration in a community in Greenland and one in the NWT illustrate the way in which Inuit integration is being achieved with Denmark and with Canada and the global economy beyond.