ne day. Eva Aariak, the second premier of Nunavut, is in Nuuk, Greenland, attending the quadrennial Inuit Circumpolar Council meeting, where delegates are discussing the European sealskin ban, the lure and threat of Arctic oil exploration, and how to make the Inuit healthy again — all worthy considerations — but Aariak is preoccupied. She has only one day between this conference and a trip to the eastern shore of James Bay to relinquish ownership of a string of islands to the Quebec Cree, and she’s been invited to spend that day in Toronto with the Queen. The thing is, she has a hunch about a birth.

The solution may seem obvious: put on a smile, go to the Royal York hotel, and foster alliances with power brokers. But a child is only born once, so instead she stops in Iqaluit to unpack and repack, and, as if surrendering to her mother’s will, Aariak’s daughter Karliin goes into labour on July 5, the one day, delivering Aariak’s third and very overdue grandchild. The boy was named after Aariak’s father, who died in 1985 but returns with this birth.

Family ties reinforced, the premier hops on a plane bound for Chisasibi, Quebec, to sign land claim documents and square-dance with handsome Cree chief Matthew Coon Come before returning to Iqaluit with a debilitating cold; still, she is unperturbed. Baby James Aliguq, now five days old, lies swaddled on her couch. We’re having tea in her modern, open concept home. Plentiful windows give air and light to Inuit prints, sculptures, and artifacts. Against one wall, a bookshelf brimming with snapshots, and against another an upright piano — the first I’ve seen in a Nunavut home. Aariak shows me a pencil drawing of her father, Aliguq Joseph. He’s deeply tanned and wearing a homemade parka. Very Nanook of the North.

For twenty-seven years, Aliguq was a general labourer for the Hudson’s Bay Company in Arctic Bay, where Aariak grew up, a tiny smattering of residents surrounded by hills on the teeming shores of Admiralty Inlet in North Baffin Island — just down the road from Nanisivik, where Ottawa plans to build a navy port. A chain smoker who didn’t speak English, he was quiet, dependable. I’m picturing him having tea with us when, suddenly, James Aliguq starts crying, which is spooky. Maybe Aariak’s dad is trying to tell her something. Maybe “You should have had dinner with the Queen,” or “Stop talking about me and tell this qallunaat about yourself.”

There is plenty to tell. She’s only the fifth woman ever to lead a provincial or territorial government in Canada, and was, on her election to the nineteen-seat Nunavut Legislative Assembly in October 2008, its sole female MLA (a by-election has since brought in a second). A photo of that group hanging outside her office features a fraternity of suits and sealskins with Aariak seated in the middle, looking like a mascot in business casual. But Aariak is not captain by fluke. In accordance with the non-partisan, consensus-style system, MLAs held a leadership forum soon after the election and voted for the premiership by secret ballot. In other words, the boys chose her to lead.

While she might be an oddity in the legislature, Aariak appears to be on the crest of a budding estrogen wave that could alter the territory’s political agenda. The commissioner of Nunavut (akin to lieutenant-governor) and the languages commissioner are both women. Leona Aglukkaq, the federal health minister, is Nunavut’s Member of Parliament, replacing Nancy Karetak-Lindell. Cultural activist Sheila Watt-Cloutier was honoured with a Nobel Peace Prize nomination in 2007 for focusing attention on the warming North, while Mary Simon represents the 50,000 Inuit in Canada as head of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami. Okalik Eegeesiak is president of the Qikiqtani Inuit Association, the largest of three regional bodies that administer Nunavut’s $1.1-billion land claim from Iqaluit. And speaking of Nunavut’s capital and largest city, Elisapee Sheutiapik has been its mayor since 2003.

Meanwhile, more girls than boys are graduating from high school, and they are ambitious. A full seventy-nine of 104 youths who have participated in the Ottawa-based leadership program Nunavut Sivuniksavut since 2005 have been female. Of Nunavut’s first batch of lawyers who graduated from the University of Victoria–affiliated Akitsiraq Law School, ten of eleven were women. In 2008, nearly 60 percent of Nunavut’s public servants were female, a figure that’s likely higher today.

It’s not that Inuit women are taking over, or even want to. They’re just joining men in the seat of power. And one day, in the midst of a burdensome political schedule, they might choose motherhood over Mother Britannia, the future over the past. This is not such a bad thing.

Nakinngaaqpit?

Eva Aariak is five-foot-one, with a short, sensible haircut and several pairs of flat-soled black leather shoes, also sensible, on a rack by her front door. She is fifty-five.

She doesn’t smoke cigarettes. Never has.

She has a high school equivalency diploma, and various post-secondary certificates in teaching and business management.

Her biological father is a Scottish bagpiper and a former art buyer for Canadian Arctic Producers. His name is Eric Mitchell. She didn’t grow up with him but as an adult has nurtured their relationship.

She ate a lot of stewed rabbit and attended Anglican church as a child. She doesn’t indulge in either anymore.

Her brother-in-law committed suicide.