Arctic indigenous regimes: indigenous issues in the Arctic Council and the BEAR (original) (raw)
Indigenous Peoples in the New Arctic
The New Arctic, 2015
This chapter provides a brief introduction to the Indigenous peoples of the Arctic by focusing on three issues of crucial importance to these peoples: selfgovernance, rights to land and resources, and traditional knowledge. We fi rst note the diversity of Indigenous groups populating the Arctic, and discuss 'who is Indigenous', in terms of recognition/defi nition employed by the various Arctic states. We then consider recent developments in each of the three areas of focus, illustrating our broad-spectrum characterizations with concrete examples drawn mainly from North America and the Russian North. We underscore advancements in Indigenous self-governance, land and resource rights and the recognition of traditional knowledge in the Arctic but also acknowledge the uneven landscape of how these are realized across the Circumpolar North. The chapter is co-authored by three scholars, two of whom are Indigenous Northerners.
Indigenous peoples of the Barents Euro-Arctic region: national and international aspects
2021
The thesis examines the problem of correlation between the sovereign interests of states and the interests of indigenous communities in the Barents Euro-Arctic region. The research provides a broad analysis of international and national legislation in order to illustrate the desire of states to maintain their own sovereignty. At the same time, the main problematic issue of the thesis was the question of the need to recognize the Karelians at the international level as the indigenous people of the region. At the moment, the absence of a special status among the indigenous peoples living in Russia can be viewed as a desire of the state to preserve integrity and build a nationwide identity. However, those indigenous peoples, whose population exceeds 50,000, are on the verge of extinction. They do not have special rights that would contribute to the preservation of their native language, culture and traditions. In this connection, there is a need to provide them with protection and supp...
Indigenous Peoples in the Arctic Council: A Unique Feature?
Yearbook of Polar Law, 2022
The website of the Arctic Council rather proudly refers to the designation of indigenous peoples as 'permanent participants' in the Council's work as a unique feature, but some indigenous leaders are less than fully satisfied. In this article it is argued that this arrangement in significant ways falls behind the role of indigenous peoples in the United Nations, in particular its human rights and environment programs. Drawing on this comparison, the article concludes with placing a few suggestions before the Arctic Council.
Inuit Governance and Contemporary Challenges: New Questions for Arctic Governance
The Yearbook of Polar Law Online, 2012
This article explores the concept of governance, primarily in terms of policy rather than law, and examines current Inuit governance in light of recent economic and political changes in the Arctic region at the national and international level, with criteria of procedure (effficiency) and substance (equity). It points out that striking diffferences exist between Inuit regions in terms of governance and political institutions. Regarding procedure, it is shown that the main impediments are the fragmentation of administrative institutions and the implementations of provisions of agreements. In terms of equity, in some cases the right to self-determination is not guaranteed or efffective, and the ownership of land, sub-surface rights, except in Greenland is not operative. On the international stage, the equity criteria is not met. Completed with an approach in terms of politics, according to which the weigh of actors, such as Inuit actors, included in the process of governance, should b...
Remaking Arctic governance: the construction of an Arctic Inuit polity
Polar Record, 2006
This article focuses on the construction of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC), the aim being to offer the historical context within which the ICC came to serve as a significant voice for Arctic policy making and as a representative of Inuit peoples in general. It explores the role of the ICC in relation to the domestic, regional, and international political events taking place during its formative years in order to provide the basis through which the ICC came to be a political authority in the Arctic. While the main coalescence of events was around the theme of Arctic resource development, each event significantly helped lay the foundation for, and structures under which, Arctic policy would proceed into the future. This includes a changing Arctic narrative that has transformed the Arctic from a being a region concentrated on resource extraction and Cold War security into a region serving as a symbolic pinnacle for global sustainable development. Through the expanded political agency of the ICC and an international focus on the Arctic, a vision of the Arctic has emerged under which it is defined by its natural environment and by the indigenous peoples who inhabit this space. This is an INDIPO project paper .
Background paper: Indigenous peoples and the Arctic
The aim of this paper is to present the situation of the Arctic indigenous peoples in relation to the changing marine environment. However, the role of the marine environment can only be understood in a wider context of the overall situation of Arctic Indigenous peoples due to the complexity of their respective indigenous ways of life. Therefore, it's necessary to describe not only the direct impacts of climate change on the Arctic marine environment but also on the terrestrial areas of indigenous peoples. To complete the picture, a focus is also placed on economical, legal and political aspects.
Chapter 4, Section I, Yearbook of Polar Law XIII (Brill), 2022
Successful collaboration between the Indigenous peoples and the sovereign states of Arctic North America has helped to stabilize the Arctic region, fostering meaningful Indigenous participation in the governance of their homeland through the introduction of new institutions of self-governance at the municipal, tribal and territorial levels, and successful diplomatic collaborations at the international level through the Arctic Council. Undergirding each of these pillars of Indigenous participation in Arctic governance is a mutuality of commitment to the principle of co-management of the Arctic that has united Indigenous peoples and the state across Arctic North America. Co-management has become so widely and reciprocally embraced by tribal peoples and states alike that it now provides a stable foundation bridging the Indigenous, transnational world with the Westphalian world of states and statecraft. This stability and the reciprocal and over time increasingly balanced relationship between sovereign states and Indigenous stakeholders has yielded a widely recognized spirit of international collaboration often referred to as Arctic exceptionalism. Along the way, co-management has transformed into both a mechanism of, and powerful paradigm for, trans-Arctic diplomacy that fosters not only greater domestic unity between tribe and state, but between states as well, catapulting mechanisms designed for domestic resource management to the international stage. Arctic exceptionalism has come under recent strain from the renewal of great power competition in the Arctic. As Arctic competition between states rises, the multitude of co-management systems and the multi-level, intergovernmental and inter-organizational relationships they have nurtured across the region can help to neutralize new threats from intensifying interstate tensions.
Inuit Political Engagement in the Arctic
Arctic Yearbook, 2012
The nation-state has typically been employed as the primary unit for political analysis in conventional international relations theory. However, since the end of the Cold War, transnational issues such as climate change along with a growing number of multinational corporations and international organizations are challenging the limits of that analytical model. This is especially true in the Arctic where indigenous organizations have reframed the region as a distinct territory that transcends national political boundaries. In Canada, the Inuit have remapped the Arctic along cultural lines in an effort to ensure all Inuit benefit from future policy implementation. At the international level, the Inuit are promoting a concept of the Arctic based on cultural cohesion and shared challenges, in part to gain an enhanced voice in international affairs. The Inuit are also utilizing customary law to ensure their rights as a people will be upheld. What is occurring in the Arctic is an unparall...
The Inuit and Sovereignty: The Case of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference and Greenland
Politik, 2011
This paper addresses the positioning of the Inuit with regard to the institution of sovereignty within the broader context of an Arctic region that is becoming increasingly territorialized. First, the paper considers the Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC) and its emphasis on the need to think past a strict Westphalian conception of bounded state sovereignty in favor of a circumpolar cooperation that recognizes the Inuit people as key actors within any regime of Arctic governance. Juxtaposed to the ICC, however, the paper goes on to analyze the Greenland self rule government, which, in positioning itself for the creation of a future independent “Inuit state”, takes a much more traditional approach to international relations, thus embracing a more territorial conception of sovereignty. A rift is hence uncovered in the way that Inuit identity and sovereignty are conceived by the ICC and the Greenlandic self rule government. The paper continues to consider the possible impact of an inde...
Arctic (in)security and Indigenous peoples: Comparing Inuit in Canada and Sámi in Norway
Security Dialogue, 2016
While international relations has increasingly begun to recognize the political salience of Indigenous peoples, the related field of security studies has not significantly incorporated Indigenous peoples either theoretically or empirically. This article helps to address this gap by comparing two Arctic Indigenous peoples – Inuit in Canada and Sámi in Norway – as ‘securitizing actors’ within their respective states. It examines how organizations representing Inuit and Sámi each articulate the meaning of security in the circumpolar Arctic region. It finds that Inuit representatives have framed environmental and social challenges as security issues, identifying a conception of Arctic security that emphasizes environmental protection, preservation of cultural identity, and maintenance of Indigenous political autonomy. While there are some similarities between the two, Sámi generally do not employ securitizing language to discuss environmental and social issues, rarely characterizing the...
Introduction: Circumpolar Dimensions of the Governance of the Arctic
The Palgrave Handbook of Arctic Policy and Politics, 2019
Over 20 years ago, noted Arctic scholars Gail Oscherenko and Oran Young published a book with the compelling title The Hot Arctic. If the Arctic was hot at that time-and in comparative terms it was-it is a raging inferno now. Consider just a small subset of the issues currently at play: unchecked climate change, the largely unmoderated introduction of transformational technologies, the near collapse of traditional languages and severe cultural erosion among some Indigenous peoples, the redevelopment of Arctic spaces into playgrounds for wealthy outsiders, the rapid outmigration of northern residents, including Indigenous peoples, continued economic marginalization, the decline in harvestable wildlife, tragic levels of Indigenous suicide, local violence, HIV AIDS, and many other social, cultural and environmental challenges. There are offsetting and more positive developments, to be sure, including the rise of Indigenous internationalism, the continued success of the Arctic Council, the rapid growth in Indigenous economic development, greater stability among the Arctic non-Indigenous settlers, the continued growth of the Far Northern research and development capacity, more supportive southern interests in the region, international concern about northern ecological vulnerabilities, global interest in Arctic ecological sustainability, community engagement with renewable energy systems and the sustained rise of regional political voices. These are complex, promising and troubling times.
Yearbook of Polar Law Vol XIII, 2022
Successful collaboration between the Indigenous peoples and the sovereign states of Arctic North America has helped to stabilize the Arctic region, fostering meaningful Indigenous participation in the governance of their homeland through the introduction of new institutions of self-governance at the municipal, tribal and territorial levels, and successful diplomatic collaborations at the international level through the Arctic Council. Undergirding each of these pillars of Indigenous participation in Arctic governance is a mutuality of commitment to the principle of co-management of the Arctic that has united Indigenous peoples and the state across Arctic North America. Co-management has become so widely and reciprocally embraced by tribal peoples and states alike that it now provides a stable foundation bridging the Indigenous, transnational world with the Westphalian world of states and statecraft. This stability and the reciprocal and over time increasingly balanced relationship between sovereign states and Indigenous stakeholders has yielded a widely recognized spirit of international collaboration often referred to as Arctic exceptionalism. Along the way, co-management has transformed into both a mechanism of, and powerful paradigm for, trans-Arctic diplomacy that fosters not only greater domestic unity between tribe and state, but between states as well, catapulting mechanisms designed for domestic resource management to the international stage. Arctic exceptionalism has come under recent strain from the renewal of great power competition in the Arctic. As Arctic competition between states rises, the multitude of co-management systems and the multi-level, intergovernmental and inter-organizational relationships they have nurtured across the region can help to neutralize new threats from intensifying interstate tensions.
Rearticulating Sovereignty in the Arctic, Examining an Inuit Claim to Complementary Sovereignty
The motivation of this project is to revisit and reconsider the central concept of sovereignty within International Relations. From a social, historical and discourse-embedded standpoint, it will be argued that the known conception and narrative of sovereignty as tied to the Westphalian nation state, comprises only one definition of several other autonomous uprising and contesting loci of sovereignty in our contemporary transforming and globalised world. Thus, the concept of sovereignty as inherently bound to a demarcated territory and authority of the nation state needs reconsideration in the aim of exploring more suitable ways to describe and conceptualise emerging non-state agency and polities in our current globalised world order. Deconstructing sovereignty into the elements of territory, population, authority and recognition provides a useful framework for understanding the significance of transnational non-state polities’ claim to sovereignty. An examination the sovereignty claim of the Inuit Circumpolar Council, functions as an empirical example, possibly indicating new ways in which transnational and non-state polities are altering known conceptions of sovereignty within International Relations. The Inuit Circumpolar Council’s claim to sovereignty consequently exhibit how the concept of sovereignty is best understood as transformative by nature rather than static or insignificant.
The Inuit in the Arctic Council: How Does Depiction Differ
The Northern Review, 2021
The fact that Indigenous Peoples' organizations have "Permanent Participant" status in the Arctic Council is often touted as one of the most positive features of the organization. However, the signifi cance of being a permanent participant is contested. How does the Arctic Council itself characterize the status of Inuit, and permanent participants in general? How does the Inuit Circumpolar Council characterize its position in the Arctic Council? How do the governments of Canada, Denmark, Russia, and the United States-countries where Inuit reside-describe the participation of Inuit? This article presents a content analysis of a selection of primary documents to illuminate the answers to these questions. The major fi nding is that Inuit describe their status as leaders in the Arctic Council, while states and the Arctic Council itself describes them as participants.
Human Security of Inuit and Sámi in the 21st Century: The Canadian and Finnish Cases
Human Security of Inuit and Sámi in the 21st Century: The Canadian and Finnish Cases, 2024
In a changing territorial and geopolitical moment of the Arctic region, are the Indigenous Peoples Organizations heard at the regional level and are the Arctic states working to keep them safe and secure? To safeguard the human security of Arctic Indigenous peoples, Arctic states (and their governments) have to understand the needs and changes that are affecting their way of life as well as to be able to cooperate between them. In a comparative study of Canada's and Finland's Arctic policies-Canada's Arctic and Northern Policy Framework (2019) and Finland's Strategy for Arctic Policy (2021)-it is possible to identify the applicability of the human security approach, which is influenced by the truth and reconciliation process between Canada and Inuit and Finland and Sámi. This process is a main factor in having their human rights respected and their human security safeguarded, considering that the relation between the countries of the North and the South of the Arctic countries is a discovery of their diversity (linguistical and cultural) in the 21st century. In my perspective, and for a participative democracy to be applied as mentioned by the green political theory (following the views of scholars like Barry, Eckersley, and Goodin), states and governments need to be open and recognise the gaps identified by those communities and transnational organisations.
This dissertation examines the role of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC) as a case study for the ways in which non-state actors are changing previous conceptions of sovereignty in the study of International Relations. This dissertation explores the ways in which sovereignty, as demarcated by a territorially bounded state, is becoming only one dimension of a new locus of sovereignty. Legitimate sovereignty has been transferred from the sole discretion of the state to the domain of existing non-state and emerging institutions. As an institution, the ICC has attained both Arctic domestic and international power and influence. Yet, its legitimacy is derived through an ongoing historical narrative of what it means to be 'indigenous' and 'Inuit' within international politics. The dissertation focuses on three different yet overlapping levels of analysis. Specifically, these levels are (1) the domestic ---Inuit political identity construction in Canada, Greenland, and ...
Inuit Governance in a Changing Environment: A Scientific or a Political Project?
2015
From the 1970s onwards, the Inuit populations have achieved political representation in several Arctic states and studies of their increasing implication in Arctic governance have recently been on the increase.5 The studies focus on indigenous organizations in the development of national and international political structures [Tennberg, 2010], on the juridical systems of Greenland and of Nunavut [Loukacheva, 2007] or on sustainable governance and human rights [Loukacheva and Garfield, 2009]. Koivurova [2011] discusses the legal aspects of indigenous governance at the international level and Nuttall [2000] examines the involvement in Arctic environmental cooperation of the indigenous peoples ’ organizations. With global warming affecting the Arctic environment and increasing economic prospects for resource exploitation and shipping, generating fears of environmental deterioration, and therefore involvement of Inuit in environmental governance, where does the question of Inuit politic...