Tuesday marked the fifteenth anniversary of the creation of Nunavut, Canada's newest territory, and the largest land claim in Canadian history. At least, by territory – there are some 33,000 people spread over 2 million square kilometres in Nunavut. On April 1, 1999, the federal government finished a decades long process over the recognition of Inuit peoples as an indigenous group by the Canadian government. Nunavut was split off from the Northwest Territories as the Canadian government as a negotiation over land ownership. Part of the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement that gave Inuit the ability to govern themselves was that they also had to “cede,release and surrender ... all their aboriginal claims, rights, title and interests.” This post looks at part of the process that gave them those rights.