Tuktoyaktuk’s Erwin Elias wins IRC chair election

Erwin Elias will be the new chair of the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation.

Elias was elected from a field of seven by community corporation directors at a Tuesday meeting inside Inuvik’s Midnight Sun Complex. He will lead the IRC for the next four years.

Incumbent Duane Smith exited after the third round of voting, bringing to an end 10 years as IRC chair and prompting a standing ovation in the room. He replaced Nellie Cournoyea as chair in January 2016.

The IRC is the Indigenous government that oversees the Inuvialuit Settlement Region in the northern reaches of the NWT, including the communities of Aklavik, Inuvik, Paulatuk, Sachs Harbour, Tuktoyaktuk and Ulukhaktok.

Elias, a former mayor of Tuktoyaktuk, praised his fellow candidates for a “month and a half of hard grinding” on the campaign trail. In an emotional address, he said Lucy Kuptana had encouraged him to put his name forward.

The fifth and final head-to-head round of voting was between Kuptana and Elias, the two Tuktoyaktuk representatives on the ballot. They previously worked together when Elias was the Arctic coastal community’s mayor and Kuptana – now an NWT minister – its senior administrator.

Elias said he could not wait to start working with the six Inuvialuit communities.

“Thank you all so much. There’s a lot of work to do in the next four years,” he said. “There’s definitely room for improvement and I can’t wait to represent Inuvialuit.”

The other five candidates in Tuesday’s election were Inuvik quartet Smith, Hans Lennie, Brian Wade and Kurt Wainman, and Paulatuk’s Lawrence Ruben.

Electing an IRC chair is done by secret ballot among the 42 directors of the six Inuvialuit community corporations.

Candidates are eliminated in rounds of voting until one receives more than half of the available votes. (The final tally between Elias and Kuptana on Tuesday was not given.)

Wainman and Ruben were removed following the first round of voting. Lennie was eliminated in the second round, Smith in the third round and Wade in the fourth.

Elias is only the third IRC chair since 1996. Former NWT premier Cournoyea, elected that year, served nine consecutive terms over a period of two decades.