Paul Okalik

Paul Okalik, born on 26 May 1964 in Pangnirtung in what was then the Northwest Territories and is now Nunavut, is a Canadian Inuk politician and lawyer who became the first premier of Nunavut. The youngest of ten children, he worked for Tunngavik Federation of Nunavut as a deputy negotiator on the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement, the largest land claim in Canadian history, before studying political science at Carleton University and law at the University of Ottawa. In 1999 he was called to the bar, the first Inuk lawyer in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. Elected to the first Legislative Assembly of Nunavut in February 1999, he was chosen premier by the Assembly on 5 March 1999 and took office on 1 April 1999, the day the territory came into existence. Nunavut has no political parties and uses a consensus model, so members are elected as independents and the Assembly recommends the ministry. He was re-chosen premier in 2004 and lost the premiership to Eva Aariak in November 2008. He later served as Speaker, ran unsuccessfully for the federal Liberals in 2011 and returned to the Assembly in 2013.