The Inuit Circumpolar Council in an Era of Global and Local Change

Abstract

For over 30 years, the Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC) has represented and promoted the interests of Inuit peoples across the circumpolar north. This transnational organization has championed a number of political, cultural, and environmental causes that are important to the Inuit, and raised the profile of Arctic and Inuit issues in multilateral forums such as the Arctic Council and the United Nations. In the words of Poul Krarup, the editor of Sermitsiaq, a leading Greenlandic newspaper: At age 30, most organizations are still trying to define their goals, but the ICC. ..is already a success: it has accomplished everything that was on its original to-do list.' Krarup argues that the ICC is still needed and he seems to envision a role for it as a government watchdog and advocate for social justice. But he also argues that the ICC should focus on economic integration and using climate change as a means of achieving unity founded on a healthy economy.2Krarup is correct in his observations that the ICC has enjoyed considerable political success. These successes have been well documented in the scholarly literature.3 Indeed, the ICC has played a prominent and influential role in multilateral discussions around contentious issues such as climate change, persistent organic pollutants, Arctic security, and regional autonomy. It has also served as forum in which representatives from lnuit regions in four different states can share information, experiences, and best practices on a range of issues that affect their communities. As such, the ICC has become the collective voice of the lnuit in their interactions with each other and with the broader global community. This voice, we have argued elsewhere, has challenged the state-centric status quo and dominant economic ideologies that shape the current world order.4 The traditional knowledge that informs its discourse has also functioned to counter western scientific constructions of the world in which we live.That being said, it would be misleading to suggest that the ICC has not encountered divisions and problems along the way. For many years, the lnuit family was separated by the geopolitical divisions of the Cold War, with the Russian Inuit only becoming active in the organization after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In the early 2000s, an editorial in the Nunatsiaq News expressed concern about the rise of violent crime and suicides and criticized the ICC as an elite organization that is out of touch with the social realities of Inuit peoples.5 In the mid-2000s, the Inuit of Alaska, who were the driving force behind the creation of the ICC, seemed to lose interest in circumpolar collaboration once their goals of self-determination had been met. Most recently, the contentious issue of resource development has revealed a range of different opinions and perspectives within the organization on its future direction.6In light of these divisions, it is important that we continue to assess critically the activities and goals of this organization as it attempts to confront such new questions as resource development. In the past, the issues that the ICC has encountered have either been unifying (the threat posed by persistent organic pollutants to the Arctic), manageable (Alaska's temporary lack of interest in circumpolar collaboration), or outside its control (the Cold War). Some issues, such as the social disparities faced by Inuit peoples, have remained unresolved, but not because of a lack of effort by Inuit leaders to draw attention to them. Overall, the ICC was able to weather these issues and, in many cases, emerge stronger as a result. The question is whether the issue of resource development in an era of rapid and dramatic climate change represents a continuation of this trend or a wholly different set of problems that will be neither unifying nor manageable in the long term.Unlike previous issues, resource development is especially contentious because it reveals the tensions between, and the contested nature of, the values that inform this transnational organization. …