These days in Canada, all eyes are on the country’s west. Alberta is hurtling toward a controversial Oct. 19 independence referendum, with reported meddling by both U.S. influencers and Russian bot farms. In response, Ottawa is promising billions in new investments in the province’s fossil fuel industry despite Supreme Court judgements that the entire separatist campaign is likely unconstitutional—and polling suggesting that it will lose.

But while this noisy sideshow distracts policymakers and pundits, a much more serious challenge to Canadian unity has arisen in the country’s far north, where the nation’s Inuit leadership has decried what one leader called “a very large shift” in the federal government’s dealings in the region.

These days in Canada, all eyes are on the country’s west. Alberta is hurtling toward a controversial Oct. 19 independence referendum, with reported meddling by both U.S. influencers and Russian bot farms. In response, Ottawa is promising billions in new investments in the province’s fossil fuel industry despite Supreme Court judgements that the entire separatist campaign is likely unconstitutional—and polling suggesting that it will lose.

But while this noisy sideshow distracts policymakers and pundits, a much more serious challenge to Canadian unity has arisen in the country’s far north, where the nation’s Inuit leadership has decried what one leader called “a very large shift” in the federal government’s dealings in the region.

In the past few decades, modern treaties signed across Inuit Nunangat—the Inuit homeland that spans parts of Yukon, the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, Quebec, and Labrador—have affirmed the right for Inuit organizations to play a role in dictating resource and infrastructure developments across the region, which is home to vast strategic reserves of minerals used in green and military technologies. In some cases, that extends to outright ownership of the lands and resources in question; in others, treaties grant broad powers to reject developments that infringe upon traditional hunting and gathering activities.

Under the leadership of former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, treaty organizations such as Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami (ITK), the representative body for all Inuit in Canada, were often called upon for consultations—and respected for their views. When it came to funding for new initiatives, like food and childcare subsidies, regional Inuit organizations were often the federal government’s preferred partners over territorial governments. Inuit representatives could veto the expansion plans of billion-dollar corporations with little fear of federal intervention.

But under Trudeau’s successor, Mark Carney, the federal government has changed tack. Inuit leaders have grumbled that Carney has been quicker to deal with territorial governments, which represent Inuit and non-Inuit alike—and often find corporate developments more palatable. When Ottawa in March........

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