Settler colonialism and the administrative state: The transfer of the Government of the Northwest Territories to Yellowknife in 1967

Abstract

In September 1967, the federal government transferred the Government of the Northwest Territories from Ottawa to Yellowknife. While the transfer brought the machinery of government closer to the governed, it also established settler institutions in the homelands of Dene, Métis, and Inuit peoples. Using the tools of administrative history and settler colonial theory, this article reconstructs the transfer using newly released archival papers of NWT Commissioner Stuart Hodgson, who oversaw the transfer and the development of government in the NWT until 1979. It analyzes the role federal public servants played in facilitating settler colonial development in northwestern Canada and, in turn, how that development affected the structure and work of the federal public service in Ottawa. While the transfer entrenched Westminster parliamentary government in the NWT, it also served as a focal point for Indigenous resurgence and resistance that has remade contemporary governance in the territory.