Land rights and nationhood: The economic backdrop to July 9’s historic anniversaries

Several of the historic anniversaries marked on 9 July carry ties to questions of land, resources and self-determination, from Argentina’s founding independence declaration to Canada’s Nunavut land claims settlement.

Argentina’s independence day, observed on 9 July, commemorates the Congress of Tucumán’s 1816 declaration of independence from Spain, under the name of the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata. The declaration followed a decade of economic and political upheaval, including the repulsion of British attacks on Buenos Aires in 1806, and is marked today as a federal holiday known as “Nueve de Julio.”

In Canada, 9 July is Nunavut Day, marking the 1993 passage of the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement Act, considered the largest Indigenous land claim settlement in Canadian history. The agreement gave Inuit communities greater authority over land and resources in the territory, laying the foundation for Nunavut’s creation as a distinct territory in 1999.

South Sudan also marks 9 July as its independence day, having formally separated from Sudan in 2011 after a referendum in which 98.8 per cent of voters backed independence, following a 2005 peace agreement that ended a civil war which had killed an estimated two million people.

In the United States, 9 July 1868 marked the ratification of the 14th Amendment, which granted citizenship and equal protection under the law to formerly enslaved Americans, a foundational moment in the country’s post-Civil War Reconstruction era.