SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - The GNWT has decided to withdraw a question posed to the territorial Supreme Court on whether the government can impose a hunting ban on aboriginal people.

Premier Floyd Roland said the decision to withdraw the question was a result of ongoing discussions with aboriginal groups with hopes of coming to an agreement on the issue.

"We best take care of this at a regional setting where it's a government to government scenario," said the premier.

With so many issues being discussed between the territorial government and aboriginal leadership, Roland said it made more sense to work together rather than take the issue through the courts - a sign the GNWT is worried about worsening relationships with aboriginal governments.

"The idea (being) that we'd be working on quite a number of fronts with aboriginal leadership across the territory - devolution, resource revenue sharing, our water strategy the caribou issue itself, quite a number of those issues require us to continue to work together," Roland said on Wednesday.

"We're building the regional leaders table ... this would make the most sense to put this to that table."

Caribou has been a topic of heated debate over the last 12 months. A report indicating a massive decline in the Bathurst caribou herd last summer led the government to impose a ban through the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, which restricted aboriginals from hunting the culturally significant animal. The ban appeared to contravene aboriginal rights to hunt, and raised indignation among aboriginal groups.

Under the Legal Questions Act, Justice Minister Jackson Lafferty asked the court in February to determine if the GNWT has "legislative authority (under the NWT Act) to regulate subsistence harvesting of barren ground caribou by aboriginal people?"

Asked whether the public might question the legitimacy of the ban now that the legal question has been withdrawn, Roland said the government's course of action was the right one at the time.

"When you're dealing with the issue that was raised ... we responded fairly quickly to that, and we felt we could actually deal with it at the political level and come out with a solution," Roland said. "I think there will be some who will use that as a question of legitimacy, but we've acted in the manner that is appropriate and responsible and we stand by that.

"For us it is, 'let's deal with it, let's get a political resolution and let's move forward.'"

During the first court date in March, Jean Teillet, the lawyer representing the Tlicho government, said her clients didn't think the question was going to be helpful in finding common ground on a management plan for the herd.

"The question might actually cause some mischief," she said. "The GNWT shouldn't be acting unilaterally, they should be working together," she said.