NTI’s mission is to implement "Inuit economic, social and cultural well-being" through the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement.
Although it is now an organization with significant responsibilities for administering the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement (NLCA), it continues as an advocate for the rights of Inuit.
The NLCA will protect this reality by giving special duties to Inuit organizations like NTI with respect to language, culture and social policy.
Once the NLCA was signed and became law in Canada, Tungavik Federation of Nunavut TFN transformed into NTI.
NTI’s executive officers, board of directors and employees all work toward ensuring the NLCA is implemented.
Nunavut "our land" in Inuktut, is a territory with a public government and the homeland of Inuit in Canada's eastern Arctic.
By the late 1960s, young Inuit men and women were graduating from high schools and vocational training in Churchill, Manitoba, Whitehorse, Yukon, and Ottawa where they had opportunities to meet with other young people from different regions to discuss common problems and consider political change.
The Committee for Original Peoples' Entitlement (COPE) was established in the western Arctic in response to exploratory oil seismic work on Banks Island in October, 1970 that threatened the subsistence of local trappers.
According to Milton Freeman who oversaw the project, it "documented the total Inuit land use area of the Northwest Territories, then stretching from the Mackenzie River to east Baffin Island," to provide "information in support of the fact that Inuit have used and occupied this vast northern land since time immemorial and that they still use and occupy it to this day.
[10]: 653 A September 5, 2018 report "Raising children" by the University of Calgary based Children First Canada and the O'Brien Institute for Public Health, wrote that Nunavut had the highest infant mortality rate (IMR) in Canada — 17.7 per 1,000 live births, much higher than the Canadian average IMR of 4.7.
[11] The president of Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated, Aluki Kotierk, said she hoped this would "spark rage" at the dire living conditions of some Nunavummiut children.