CANADA IS DIVIDED into ten provinces and two territories--the Northwest Territories and Yukon--whose land is largely owned by the federal government. The Northwest Territories is by far Canada's largest political subunit, stretching across 77 degrees of longitude, one-third more than the continental United States, and jutting up into the Arctic Ocean nearly as far as Greenland's northernmost tip.
Three aboriginal groups--the Inuit, who mostly inhabit the central and eastern region's Artic coastlines, and the forest-dwelling Dene Indians and Metis of the west--occupy a majority of the territories. But because the Inuit make up less than three percent of the total aboriginal …