SELECTED THESES ON THE CIRCUMPOLAR ARCTIC

Guided by Pal's (1987) model of public policy analysis, this thesis examines education decentralisation policy in the Northwest Territories between 1975 and 2000 through two key policy education policy documents: Learning: Tradition and Change in the Northwest Territories (1982), and People: Our focus for the future -- A strategy to 2010 (1994). The education documents are compared against the changes in education legislation and education fiscal data. The thesis also examines the historical antecedents to the decentralisation era, the Carrothers, Berger and Drury Reports, Native politics, the contribution of the reports to education policy in the era, and the history of territorial education legislation. The thesis arrives at two main conclusions: Territorial decentralisation policy was a political solution to the predominant East-West struggle for administrative and budgetary control over key areas of public policy, one of which has been education. An era of decentralisation will effectively end in the year 2000 with division and the formation of Nunavut in 1999. This is supported through the examination of the changes in education policy after 1975. With division the era of decentralisation is completed, and each western and eastern territory recentralises.