The North Slave Métis Alliance is a non-profit society representing the Indigenous rights-bearing Métis people of the Northwest Territories who primarily exercise their rights north and east of Great Slave Lake.
Registered in 1996, the organisation exists to negotiate a regional comprehensive land claim centred in the North Slave Region. Its members represent Métis communities in Yellowknife, Behchokǫ̀, Whatì, Gamèti and Wekweeti. Before 1996, these communities were represented by the Métis Nation of the Northwest Territories in the 1975–1990 Dene-Métis claim process; when that final agreement was rejected and the pan-territorial approach abandoned, the alliance was endorsed as the regional successor before the MNNWT disbanded. The organisation’s mandate includes asserting and protecting North Slave Métis Indigenous rights, promoting education and cultural development, and safeguarding traditional lands through environmental stewardship and sustainable resource use. In 2013, the alliance won a landmark caribou harvest case in the Supreme Court of the Northwest Territories; the court found the territorial government had failed its duty to consult and accommodate, and recognised that alliance members hold Indigenous rights over their traditional lands. The alliance sponsors annual events including Yellowknife’s Aboriginal Day celebration.
