Terry Halifax
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Jan 03/00) - As we embark on the 21st century, there are many questions of what the future holds for the North.

Touching on issues from environmental crisis to cultural identity, we asked some prominent Northerners to gaze into the crystal ball and tell what they see in store for our new NWT territory.

For Inuvik's Bertha Allen, the knowledge of those who have gone before is on the brink of extinction.

"Most of the knowledgeable elders are passing away and with them go the old ways," Allen said. "I guess the new generation will just have to be satisfied with what they see now."

"Very few of us have the knowledge that the elders have who are being buried now."

Allen also worries about the environment.

"We're in a scary state of affairs in the new millennium. We could be dead in the next few years for all we know," she said. "With the destruction of the environment, Mother Earth may not survive for much longer."

Senator Sibbeston on the economy

Senator Nick Sibbeston says the future bodes well for economic growth in the North.

"I think the North, now that separation has happened, has a chance to really surge ahead with development," Sibbeston said. "In our part of the North, it is relatively easier and the climate isn't as harsh."

"Generally, we have more opportunity to develop as is evident in places like Liard and I think that will just continue right down the Mackenzie Valley."

Along with development up the Valley, Sibbeston also predicts the completion of a highway.

"In the foreseeable future we could also expect the highway will probably go right down the Mackenzie Valley to Inuvik," he said. "I think in our lifetimes and hopefully in my lifetime we will see a highway."

The shape of government is also changing and Sibbeston said we've come a long way since the days he held office in the 1970s and early 1980s, first as an ordinary MLA, then as government leader.

"I think we will see a maturing of government. Right now you could say our government is in its infancy," he said. "We're very young and in terms of political institutions, we are still growing and experimenting.

I don't see it as finished, by any means -- what we see now, is not what we'll have for the rest of our lives."

"I was there in the '70s when it was very much a colonial type of government; Ottawa was still very much in control, so we've grown a lot, but we're still not finished."

Chief Blake predicts radical change

Tsiigetchic Chief Grace Blake expects to see vast changes in technology and government.

"For what I've seen in the last 40 years, there's been rapid change in the lives of people," Allen said. "There has been too much of a dependency on government and a moving away of the traditions of which ever respective nation we belong to."

Preserving culture and heritage need to be reinforced, she said.

"We have to bring the good things from those times, but also adapting to the modern way -- we have to live in both worlds in order to truly survive," Blake said. "We cannot give up what we've inherited from our own people. We depend on our traditional knowledge because it is based on survival."

"People are numbered, people are questioned to death, fill out this form, fill out that form, and we'll put you on disc or we'll file..." she said, adding that people used to be more self-reliant rather than having to answer to a bureaucracy. "It's quite belittling to people."

Mayor Lennie worries about the environment

Tulita Mayor Bertha Lennie also worries about the state of the environment.

"Here, we are lucky, because there is a lot of clean air and clean water that hasn't been contaminated, but who knows, in a hundred years that might be gone too," Lennie said.

Lennie predicts the social problems of the south will also creep North.

"There's all this new devastation and crime in the south and I'm afraid it's going to work its way North," she said. "I don't see a lot of good, it all seem pretty bleak."

Along with the technological advances, Lennie said extended life expectancy will cause other strains.

"We'll definitely be overpopulated because medicine has improved so much over the years."

Global climate change

Fort Smith energy consultant and educator Jack Van Camp, predicts severe weather problems associated with global warming. "We're starting to see the beginnings of a global shift in climate and it's going to get much worse before it gets better," Van Camp said.

"We're starting to see the beginnings of shorter, warmer winters, a lot more snow and a lot less of these real deep freezes, a lot less ice, a lot less permafrost; we'll see the treeline move further north and east, more landslides and hotter, drier summers."

"Other parts of the world will get hit a lot harder than we will here," he said.

"The flooding we've seen just this year, like in India, killed tens of thousands of people and flooding in parts of South America; it's all part of the signature."

"We're still increasing our emissions, we're not decreasing them," Van Camp said.

"Globally, there's been some success stories, but we really haven't turned it around by any means."

The government and culture of the NWT will likely move closer to that of the territory to our left, Van Camp predicted.

"As it evolves, I think the western territory will become the melting pot, an integration of what happens in the Eastern Arctic and what happens in the Yukon," he said.

"Ultimately, economically and culturally we will end up a lot more like the Yukon."