Meantime, Innu and Inuit groups claimed the nickel deposit lay on their ancestral land.
But there was no sign of the Inuit, who would guide her in their traditional kayaks.
It was signed by the governments of Canada and Quebec and by Inuit representatives.
BBC: The overwhelming majority of Nunavik residents are Inuit
Canada's Inuit say the trade should continue as it is critical to their economic survival.
According to Inuit representatives, the pelts from around 300 bears are sold for rugs.
Other delegates spoke dismissively of companies that, a while back, had talked Inuit into bad deals.
The Inuit are not against development, but want to ensure that it happens on their terms.
Yet elsewhere the Inuit by the admittedly miserable standards of indigenous peoples are pretty well off.
Because Europeans came late to the Arctic, the Inuit got rights, not smallpox-infected blankets.
Greenland's Inuit, who make up around 85% of the island's population, are doing even better.
Sea ice vocabularies of similar magnitude and sophistication are reported from Inuit communities across the circumpolar North.
The result marks a victory for Canada's indigenous Inuit people over their bigger neighbour to the south.
With the decline in caribou comes a knock-on effect to native Inuit hunters, according to the report's authors.
Nunavut, a vast northern territory in Canada, was created a decade earlier by a settlement with the Inuit.
Recent days have seen a spike in H1N1 flu among the Inuit and the country's isolated indigenous communities.
Most Canadian Inuit, following a landmark reform in 1986, live in semi-autonomous provinces, with pipeline and mining revenues.
These changes have been particularly evident to Inuit hunters of Clyde River in Nunavut (Canada) since the 1990s.
But according to Inuit representatives at this meeting, the trading of polar bear parts represented a vital economic interest.
They have amplified their power by banding together in the Inuit Circumpolar Council, (ICC), a body created in 1977.
Inuit hunters are finding the sea ice too thin to bear their sleds.
Old Paleo-Inuit archaeological sites are also common, and are usually ideal landing spots to see both terrestrial and marine wildlife.
Greenland, a territory of Denmark with a predominantly Inuit population, assumed self-rule in 2009, giving it control of its resources.
The Inuit represent less than half the Arctic's indigenous people, who in turn account for only 10% of the region's population.
One winter day in northern Quebec some years ago, a polar bear wandered into a village and approached a seven-year-old Inuit child.
An Inuit settlement will not do: dogs will bark, children will follow.
Canada's federal health minister, Leona Aglukkaq, who is herself Inuit, said additional personnel and supplies have been sent to the Inuit communities.
The Vikings tossed logs, the Scots threw sheaves of straw, the ancestors of the Inuit are rumored to have carried walruses around.
In particular the Inuit live in areas where natural resources are plentiful.
What is more, the Inuit are determined not to be bowled over.
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