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July 14 was a historic day for the Acho Dene Koe First Nation and Fort Liard.

In front of more than 60 people gathered in the community's arbour, Chief Steven Kotchea signed a framework agreement alongside Chuck Strahl, Minister of Indian and Northern Affairs, and Michael Miltenberger, deputy premier of the government of the Northwest Territories. The agreement allows Acho Dene Koe (ADK) to negotiate its own land claim agreement.

July 14 may also be remembered as a historic day for the whole of the Dehcho First Nations (DFN). News of the signing immediately raised questions of what will happen to DFN and the Dehcho Process.

Since starting negotiations with Canada and the NWT in 1999, DFN hasn't always had a lot going for it but one thing that's been constant was the Dehcho's solidarity. Regardless of whether negotiations were moving forward or if they had stalled, the members of the Dehcho First Nations were in it together.

Now that ADK has committed to starting its own negotiations there's a looming question of what the fallout will be. A variety of scenarios come to mind.

As ADK negotiates for land in the NWT, it's undoubtedly going to include pieces that other bands including Trout Lake, Nahanni Butte and Fort Simpson also consider their traditional areas. Will the idea of their traditional land being claimed by a neighbour make other First Nation groups run to the federal government asking for their own land agreements? Is July 14 going to marked as the day that the Dehcho First Nations started to fall apart?

Questions are also being raised about how ADK's agreement will affect other aspects of the Dehcho Process such as the Dehcho Land Use Plan. It remains to be seen if ADK's final agreement will have any bearing on the acceptance and implementation of the plan.

With all of these scenarios in mind, it's difficult to see how the history of July 14 will turn out well but then there's also ADK to consider.

During an interview, Kotchea said the framework agreement is something that the members of ADK did for themselves. It wasn't done with DFN in mind or with the purpose of dividing the communities, said Kotchea.

For ADK, July 14 is the day on which, after two decades of work, it finally moved forward with an agreement that will allow it to negotiate for official recognition on its traditional lands that lie in British Columbia and the Yukon. A final agreement may still be years away but ADK has taken the first step towards that goal.

There's no way to tell how this will end but Acho Dene Koe has again proven that it's willing to strike out on its own and do what it considers best for its members. It's now up to the rest of the Deh Cho to decide how to respond.

This is it, after nearly a year of planning, we're on the verge of celebrating our golden anniversary. Inuvik is 50 years old this week and, thankfully, the community is not showing much of its age.

I regularly have the urge to write about my home.

There's no denying it, I love this town and want to be a part of its growth for many years to come.

We've all come a long way from the humble beginnings of a planned community that was made to cater to the needs of the Canadian Forces.

I enjoy hearing stories about partying out on Navy road with the soldiers and going to community dances held by the Armed Forces.

Yeah, it sounds like they pretty well ran the show around here for years.

Now, we've matured as a community (in some respects) and we're almost walking on our own two legs.

Just like an over-protective parent, I think the GNWT is rather reluctant to see us become so independent.

With a strong leadership, both municipal and aboriginal, we are the powerhouse of the North. Whether or not the rest of the territory will come around remains to be seen.

Looking back at my youngest years, I feel emotions of sadness at being so small and naive.

I've come a long way from being too afraid of the big school bus taking me to a strange downtown area.

My world was as big as the apartment I shared with my grandparents on Dolphin Street. I remember thinking that road went on forever past Corner store, only to learn the truth years later.

Certainly, there are many stories about our town that are circulating, waiting to be told.

One man who took our history and made something of it was Dick Hill.

He's in town to release his photo books about the town and the lay of the land back then.

Without storytellers like him, we don't have much of a chance of recording our history.

I'm too young to really remember it, but I'm sure a lot of you in town remember bringing your clothes to the laundromat just like it happened last week.

Social issues aside, this town is growing nicely. We've seen more and more families come North looking for a new take on life. Unemployed workers come North for the benefits and get so caught up in the Northern life, some stay for a long time.

The development is easy to see, from four-storey buildings to renovations to our oldest structures.

This weekend is shaping up to be one of the busiest times on record for our community. I hope there will be many people out sharing the spirit of the midnight sun with others.

I can only imagine how difficult and challenging it's been for those organizers to plan both the arts festival and homecoming celebrations so close to one another, but both groups need to be congratulated on a job well done.

So keep it up, Inuvik. We're almost forgetting all about our unruly youth who walk the streets looking to cause trouble at night.

Yellowknife, a frontier town that sprung up in the 1930s, used to be a much different place in many ways.

Even in the 1980s, the city was apparently still making agreements sealed with a handshake. That's pretty much unheard in today's society, where lawsuits are filed in the blink of an eye.

It was in 1981, according to Mary Linn, an owner of Yk apartments, that the City of Yellowknife verbally allowed her to use four parking spots for tenants of her building.

Because there was no deal in writing, she is having a difficult time proving its existence.

Her advantageous arrangement is about to disappear because phase 3 of the Somba K'e Civic plaza, a recreational park for all residents' enjoyment, will encroach on her four coveted parking spaces, which are property of the city.

Trying to make her case, Linn, while appearing before city council on July 7, pointed to a 2001 letter from a former city official that states the agreement "will be dissolved if the city sells, leases or develops another use for the property."

That letter may be evidence of a previous verbal commitment. It definitely speaks to the city's right to sever the terms at the city's convenience.

If council is feeling generous, it may try to make provisions that would allow Linn to retain access to her fuel tanks.

Outside of that, the city owes her nothing more than any other taxpayer. She should be grateful for the free parking she enjoyed for 27 years - a very rare privilege in today's world.

The North is loaded with artistic talent, and Yellowknife stands tall on the arts scene.

Yet our city's best artists look to Inuvik's Great Northern Arts Festival as the top venue to showcase their work alongside other talented Northern painters, sculptors and craftspeople.

How is it that Inuvik, a town of 3,200 just off the Arctic Ocean, should come to be the Mecca of Northern arts festivals, while Yellowknife, the centre of the Northern territories in nearly every sense, has no such event that even comes close?

Establishing a comparable festival in Yellowknife is simple common sense. Travelling here from the far reaches of the North, or from anywhere else in the country for that matter, is a lot easier. Yellowknife has numerous sites to host exhibits, workshops and performances. As the hub of the North, it already attracts talented artists who are looking to take their work further.

A lack of festivals and showcases to display work or put on performances simply pushes artists to more fertile ground in the south. Yellowknife's function at the moment, as far as artists are concerned, is to serve simply as a layover.

As "gateway of the North," the city is in a favoured position to showcase Northern creative talent. It is in Yellowknife's best interests - and the interests of the artists - to make the most of this.

While we have no doubt the self-defence kill of a polar bear in Coral Harbour this past week was a righteous one, it will be interesting to see how this year plays out when it comes to the number of defence kills reported around Kivalliq communities.

Outrage erupted on a number of fronts after the Government of Nunavut (GN) reduced the 2008-09 polar bear quota to eight bears in the Western Hudson Bay area.

Traditionally, the communities of Rankin Inlet, Arviat, Whale Cove, Chesterfield Inlet and Baker Lake shared a quota of 56 polar bears in the Western Hudson Bay area.

That number was dropped to 38 in 2007-08 before the most-recent deduction.

After the GN reduced the quota to eight, the clamour reached the point where civil disobedience was suggested in some quarters as a possible course of action for Kivalliq hunters to demonstrate their outrage at the decision.

When one hears the term civil disobedience, the images that usually flash across the subconscious are ones of activists being led away in handcuffs while crowds of protesters voice their disapproval at the arresting officers.

But there are many forms of civil disobedience, with some more subtle than others.

And rightly or wrongly, self-defence kills could present themselves as the perfect way for those opposed to the low quota of polar bears in the Western Hudson Bay area to employ their own brand of civil disobedience.

It would take some great detective work to prove, for example, if discharged bear bangers were used before or after an animal was brought down in defence of one's life.

Add in eyewitness accounts testifying to the fact it was a self-defence kill, and any misrepresentation of the facts would be difficult to filter out to say the least.

The self-defence approach also comes with its own support network, thanks to the same researchers whose findings the hunters contest.

After all, it's hard to debunk the facts so meticulously gathered and documented by the scientific community in pushing for the reduced polar bear quotas.

They've made it perfectly clear many polar bears in the Western Hudson Bay area are struggling with the effects of climate change.

The changes have meant a loss of hunting habitat, resulting in many bears being underweight and hungry.

Their aggressiveness, understandably, has grown considerably as the lack of ice has driven the bears further inland in a desperate search for food in unfamiliar territory.

Given these established facts, any experienced hunter would have little difficulty in - unwittingly, of course - placing himself in a situation where a self-defence kill was necessary after exhausting every means of scaring a bear off.

And once the bear had to be killed, there would be nothing left to do but share the meat and get on with life.

Inuit have an inherent respect for the land and the animals on it that have helped sustain their existence for centuries.

However, there's no guarantee that respect will be enough to overcome temptation if driven by need and an empty belly.