Yellowknife (Apr 14/03) - Two key agreements will be signed this week as Indian Affairs Minister Bob Nault visits Inuvik and Fort Providence.

On Wednesday, Nault is in Inuvik to sign an agreement in principle on Beaufort Delta self government.

The AIP was scheduled to be signed last June 21 but three Gwich'in chiefs objected. The signing was put on hold while negotiators ironed out concerns over the future of band councils. The agreement specified that "the Gwich'in Bands should cease to exist."

Since then, the three band councils, in Tsiigehtchic, Aklavik and Inuvik, have approved resolutions supporting the deal.

The signing will begin with an intergovernmental forum in the morning, meetings until 4 p.m. and a ceremony and feast to follow.

In Fort Province on Thursday, Nault and Deh Cho First Nations officials will sign an interim land withdrawals agreement and an interim resources development agreement.

Both agreements are for five-year periods.

"With the conclusion of these agreements, it marks the end of the first stage of negotiations," says Grand Chief Michael Nadli of the DCFN.

Those negotiations began in 1999.

NWT Premier Stephen Kakfwi will also attend the Fort Providence ceremony.

Nadli says the next stage in the process will be negotiating an agreement-in-principle, which will detail Dene government in the Deh Cho region.

The interim land withdrawals agreement will remove about 50 per cent of Deh Cho land from development.

The land was selected based on the criteria of cultural and spiritual significance, ecological sensitivity, food and medicine, and watershed protection.

"It's a major step. It's unprecedented," says Nadli, explaining other claims withdrew blocks of land, instead of such specific areas.

And he notes that, in other claims, land was not withdrawn until an agreement-in-principle was reached.

As for the interim resource development agreement, Nadli explains, "It's basically a royalty sharing agreement between ourselves and the federal government."

The agreement will give the DCFN a percentage of federal government royalties collected from the Mackenzie Valley.