"YOU made your food, clothing and shelter from the creatures of the land, air and sea and turned that frozen land into a place full of music, art and love. You were here first, long before the rest of us and you welcomed us with generosity, compassion and cheerfulness," said the Governor General of Canada, Mr Romeo le Bland, at formal ceremonies to mark the creation of the new Canadian territory of Nunavut last Thursday.
The Canadian Prime Minister, Mr Jean Chretien, and many dignitaries, spoke of how the road to self-determination, their own government and the settlement of a land-claim had not been easy for the area's aboriginal people, the Inuit.
The 20 years it took had been fraught with difficulties, but all concerned said hard work and patience was nothing new to the Inuit, who had realised their dream.
Everyone spoke of those Inuit qualities which led to the map of Canada being redrawn, with nearly two million square kilometres of the Northwest Territories becoming self-governing. The new Premier, Mr Paul Okalik (34), said he was proud his people had achieved control over their own lands and future without civil disobedience or litigation.
Iqaluit, on Baffin Island where the ceremonies took place, is the new capital of Nunavut. It would be wrong to say it is a one-horse town, for I doubt there was ever a horse in Iqaluit.
The Nunavut Day community feast (frozen cubes of raw whale meat and shrimp, skewers of musk ox and caribou, dried char, cheese and melon) was held in a Canadian Air Force hangar.
The formal ceremonies took place in the high school gymnasium, because the assembly building had not yet been completed. It is not easy to build on permafrost, even working 12 hours a day, when every piece of material, is a threehour flight away.
Decorated with banners and posters by children from outlying communities, the gymnasium comfortably accommodated the dignitaries, civil servants in seal skin waistcoats, fur-hatted Mounties and local people in braided and embroidered parkas - some women with babies in their hoods - and a press corps from around the world.
The temperature was about minus 20 Centigrade C, degrees celsius, but the Inuit have never let the weather get in the way of a good time. The and the wind made it even colder as we all headed to the beach for fireworks. Far away from the noise, no doubt the seals and polar bears out on the ice reckoned it was just a rather good show from the Northern Lights.
The coat of arms of Nunavut symbolises the riches of land, sea and sky, with a caribou and a narwhal, a stone oil lamp, the sun and the night sky, an igloo and an inukshuk, a stone cairn marker built in the form of a person.
The difficulties facing the new government of Nunavut are enormous but optimism is high.
Only one generation away from the nomadic hunting life, it is thought that Inuit determination and success in modern negotiation is due not so much to contact with white people but from being so cut off from them for so long by virtue of climatic and geographical isolation.
Never dependent on welfare until the 1960s, they have always been a self-reliant egalitarian people. The (mostly happy) contact with whalers, however, has left its mark. Fiddles and accordions were at the centre of the music festival to close Nunavut Day. Jigs, reels and sets were danced, and though they hit the frame rather the skin, their drum dances may be thousands, but not a million miles away from Ireland. Their throat singing is just mouth music lower down.