IQALUIT, Nunavut — No one expected miracles a year ago when a fifth of Canada became the Inuit homeland called Nunavut.
Widespread poverty, unemployment, crime, substance abuse and a high suicide rate continue to beset the Arctic region as large as Western Europe with a population of 25,000.
Yet the head of Nunavut's 19-seat legislature, the first in Canada or the United States to be dominated by native Americans, says tiny steps toward growth and development have occurred.
"I saw my first group of Japanese tourists in Rankin Inlet this year," Premier Paul Okalik said. "That's a good sign."
Nunavut lobbyists argue in the United States to ease restrictions on seal exports and in Ottawa to increase the territory's share of the turbot off its coasts.
Projects to exploit natural resources — an exploratory crab fishery up the coast of Baffin Island and a commercial caribou harvest in Rankin Inlet, off Hudson Bay — have begun.
Government construction projects to clean up abandoned military sites and build infrastructure offer some jobs. Okalik said his government managed a $23 million surplus from its first-year budget of $425 million, which is heavily subsidized by Canada's federal government.
But Okalik, a 35-year-old lawyer, knows good intentions only go so far among people facing 22 percent unemployment, a housing shortage that forces overcrowding and social ills exacerbated by the harsh Arctic climate.
"I can't do anything about that," he said of those complaining about a lack of progress. "We're being conservative with our spending and cutting costs wherever we can. We're spreading benefits wherever we can."
Despite the joy and hopes expressed at the April 1, 1999, ceremony that created the territory, named "our land" in the Inuit language, all involved knew significant change would take generations.
The problems remained evident as Nunavut observed its first birthday with a low-key ceremony in Iqaluit, the capital situated on Baffin Island, 1,600 miles north of New York.
Most of Nunavut's people are Inuit, descendants of nomads who crossed into the Canadian arctic from Alaska about 1,000 years ago.
Their traditional lifestyle, centered on hunting, endured largely intact until the 1950s and '60s, when Canadian authorities forced them to settle in permanent communities. Many Inuit children were pressured to attend church-run boarding schools away from their families and were force-fed the culture of the "qablunaaq" — white man.
About a third of the population is on welfare, with the per capita income at $7,500 in the territory, where living costs are high due to its remoteness in what used to be the eastern 60 percent of the Northwest Territories.
The big economic hope is mining what are believed to be good deposits of gold and diamonds and reaching large gas reserves in the High Arctic islands.
But over half the territory lacks basic maps needed for industry exploration, said Dave Scott, chief geologist in the Canada-Nunavut Geoscience Office.
He estimated exploration and research to produce proper maps would take 10 years at a cost of $100 million. In addition, the high costs of working in the north require larger profit margins, he said.
Such conditions make it impossible for Nunavut to shuck its reliance on federal money any time soon, said Jerry Ell, president of Qiqiktaaluq Corp., one of the three so-called "birthright corporations" intended to be Nunavut's economic engine.
Meanwhile, Canada's federal government should offer Nunavut control over natural resources and provide housing money for Inuit, Okalik said.